


Had a Great Fall

by Tallihensia



Category: Smallville
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Episode Related, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 10:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallihensia/pseuds/Tallihensia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.... After the tornadoes went through Smallville (canon end S1 Tempest), brought down a portion of the Luthor castle, and trapped Jonathan in with a reporter that knows Clark's secrets, lives have been shattered, some irrevocably.  For what is left, how then can they come together and be fixed? This story is about the journey to the end of the night... and the beginning of a new day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Had a Great Fall

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Only mine in my dreams. This story was written for free entertainment purposes only and may not be reproduced for profit or altered without permission.
> 
>  **Warnings:** character deaths (not Clark or Lex)
> 
>  **Spoilers:** Tempest S1 finale, Vortex S2
> 
>  **Notes:** For the [2013 Smallville Big Bang](http://smallvillebbang.livejournal.com/). This was plotted and conceived a long time ago. It’s probably one of my oldest plot bunnies and I've wanted to write it for awhile now, but there were always a few more urgent things to write. Finally, though, it just had to be done. ^^ Beta by Tainry - thank you!
> 
>  **Artwork:** The art created for this story - cover and section banners and final portrait - was all done by the very awesome Fruitbat00. Thank you so very much for it! It fits the story perfectly. :) [Link to Fruitbat's LJ page](http://fruitbat00.livejournal.com/53394.html) with all the art compiled.

[](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a169/alatri/smallville/bigbang/fallcolourc_zps7cd4fca5.jpg)  
(click for larger version) 

# Had a Great Fall

Lex hated his father. He'd had one of the most horrible days in his life, and it was all because of his father. His Dad had announced he was closing the plant, blamed it on Lex, and cheerfully told Lex that now he could come home. A thousand people out of work, because his father didn't like Lex 'rebelling'. 

The workers didn't trust Lex, and Lex was tired of it, but he also couldn't blame them. Asking them to get second mortgages for a buy-out, when he lived in a castle and had a dozen cars... He was selling all his mother's stock, selling his cars, and promising untold favors to line up the voting block that would allow him the buy-out, but it wasn't his life, not like theirs. 

It would be, however, Lex's freedom. Freedom from his father, from living his life the way his father wanted him to. It would be the first step on his path for _his_ life. At least he kept telling himself that, pretending that he had a life and a future all on his own. One that wasn't dictated to him by others.

A life his father didn't want him to have. 

Lex stared at his father and listened to empty words.

"You braved the weather to tell me that?" Lex couldn't believe it. There was a storm outside and yet his father was here to harass him, intimidate him into dropping the effort to save the plant. On the other hand, Lex could well believe it. It was typical. 

"You're not my enemy; you're my son," Lionel said with every appearance of sincerity.

Lex didn't believe any of it. Twenty-one years had taught him not to believe it. As he'd told Clark earlier, his and his father's relationship had been one built on lies and deceit. He replied to his father with those thoughts, "I never saw the distinction." The words echoed hallow, bouncing around inside his heart, shaking out his life.

And now his dad was trying to encourage him using some of life's lessons. Most of the time Lex liked to make comparisons between himself and Alexander the Great, yet when it was his dad being the one to quote at him, it just sounded pretentious. 

Annoyed, Lex retaliated with Shakespeare, which he knew his dad didn't like as well. 

His dad started to lose his cool, getting angry and descending into threats against Lex and anybody in Smallville who would help him. Generally in an argument, it was rare for his dad to lose his cool. Getting his dad riled up was fun, even if the threats were very real indeed. Lex grinned internally, settling in to do some real needling, but then everything went to hell.

The castle walls collapsed. Lex saw them go down, saw the dust, heard the noise. Saw his father go down with them. Lex was just a foot away from where they'd come down. Just a foot. He couldn't move. There was nothing holding him in place, but all the same, he couldn't move.

"Lex! Help me, Lex!"

Lex stared at the castle stones pinning his father to the ground. He could hear the storm outside through the hole the collapse had created. The storm had gotten a lot worse in the short time his father had arrived. How did it collapse? Wasn't this castle supposed to have been rebuilt to code? His father had probably bribed the inspectors, just to have it done more historically accurate. 

"Lex! I can't move."

Shaking himself out of his stupor, Lex shot a quick glance at the masonry around his father and above him. It didn't look stable, and the storm was still raging outside. More of it could collapse at any moment. It was only chance that Lex hadn't been hit the first time. His dad was trapped under one of the bigger pieces. If Lex pulled him straight out, it would probably collapse the rest of the structure, and possibly more of the ceiling. But there didn't look to be any way of stabilizing it fast enough that it wouldn't come down anyhow. If he moved that side beam? Got something underneath it...

"Help me, Lex! Son!"

Son? His father only used that when he was trying to get something out of Lex, bull-shitting him, and trying to put on the charm. Lionel really thought that using it _now_ would make a difference? It might make Lex _not_ want to help! Did his father honestly believe that Lex wasn't going to? That he wasn't working on a plan? His dad didn't really believe in love, no matter how much he spoke of it, or he would never think that.

"I'm your father!"

For a brief, intense, moment, Lex wished his father had been crushed, not just pinned. Dead, he wouldn't be trying to manipulate Lex anymore. Lex wouldn't be having to make this decision, he wouldn't be listening to his dad plead without love, the plant would be saved, and he could live his own life the way he wanted to.

Then Lex stepped forward and clasped hands with his father, pulling him out. What he wanted didn't matter, he wasn't leaving his father to die. He wasn't leaving anybody to die.

The walls groaned and the storm growled. 

Both Lex and his dad looked up as the rest of the ceiling fell.

... ... ... 

"Clark! Hey, Clark!" 

His name echoed through the hospital corridor. Clark turned, seeing the short blonde hair and the worried face of his friend. "Chloe. Are you all right?"

"Never better. I love being dumped in the middle of a dance and then searching for three hours worried that something had happened to you." 

The dance. Clark had almost forgotten about it. "Oh jeez, Chloe. I'm sorry. I just..."

Chloe made a face. "Yeah, Lana told me that you'd rescued her. Saving a friend's life is always a good reason for leaving. It happens so often with you, I'm almost getting used to it." 

Clark felt like sinking through the floor. He wasn't really sure how to respond. Then Chloe said they should just be friends, and he could tell she didn't really mean it, except she did because all Clark ever did was hurt her. Numbly, he agreed. He'd only done it because she wanted it in the first place. 

"So," Chloe searched for a new topic, glancing around them and recalled to their surroundings. "Are you here rescuing more people?"

From one low to the next. Clark's thoughts were instantly back out at the farm. "I was dropping my mom off to get looked at. She's okay," he hastily forestalled Chloe's gasped concern, "just a few cuts and bruises. But my dad..." Clark looked away towards the farm. "My dad was outside when the twister hit. We haven't found him yet. I was just about to go back and keep searching."

Chloe's concern and empathy were what made her such a good friend. Clark heard her out and shared his own frustration and worry. Search and Rescue had told his mom that they couldn't help until tomorrow at earliest. They were full up working on situations where buildings had collapsed with people trapped under them, and clearing roads so vehicles could make it through. The three tornados had cut not just one swath, but multiple streaks of damage through the town and there wasn't anybody available to search. Just himself, for now. 

Finally, Clark left. Chloe had offered to come with him, but Clark sent her after his mom instead. He could use his x-ray vision to see through the darkness, and his speed to move around, but only if there weren't any well-meaning friends to help search with him. He'd welcome their help... but also feared it. He wished more of his friends knew what he was... but he couldn't tell them.

... 

"Honey, you have to get some rest," Clark's mom told him, even as she wearily made another pot of coffee for herself.

Clark slowly lifted his head and poked his fork at the pancake. He'd been out all night searching. Searched the farm, searched the woods, searched the roads.... He remembered how the twister had picked up Lana's truck and carried it miles away. If that had happened to his dad...

"Hi Chloe, Lana." His mom's voice, not directed at him.

Clark looked up and then over at the door.

"Hi Mrs. Kent." The two girls were subdued in the face of another Kent tragedy. 

Clark hauled in his thoughts. It wasn't their fault, and maybe his mom was right and he should get some rest. But his dad was still out there. How could he sleep when his dad needed his help?

"What are you two doing here? Sit down and have some pancakes, there're plenty."

They protested briefly, but then settled in with better appetites than Clark had. 

"We came to see how you were doing," Chloe said, then passed the conversational reins to Lana with her eyes.

"I've been working with the Red Cross," Lana picked it up smoothly, "and Matt says they'll have a small team out here to help you search this morning. They're stretched thin with professionals, but they have a lot of volunteers who can do the basics."

Clark and his mom both thanked her profusely. Even if Clark had already searched, it never hurt to have more eyes out. It was easy to overlook things in such a large area.

"What else?" Clark eyed Chloe. She was squirming, which meant she had something to ask, but she knew it wasn't quite appropriate. 

"Well..." Chloe sighed and apparently gave up on her attempt to not intrude. "Has Lex come by at all?"

"Lex?" Clark and his mom looked at each other. Clark felt a frisson of anger go through him at his friend's name. Lex had something to do with that reporter, Roger Nixon, even if Lex had denied it. And that meant that Lex was partly responsible for his dad being out in the twister. Chasing after Nixon and that video tape he had of the spaceship. They also now knew that it had been Nixon who had blown up the truck with Clark inside of it. With all of that... what part did Lex play? Clark knew that Lex liked him, or at least he was pretty sure they were friends, but Lex's curiosity and his political games would be the death of him.

Chloe shrugged. "There was supposed to be a meeting about the buy-out this morning. And, well, tornados. But it wasn't really _canceled_ or anything like that, so Dad and a bunch of the others who could get away showed up and Lex wasn't there." Chloe spread her hands.

Why did people always look for Clark when they were looking for Lex? "Did you call?"

Okay, Clark probably deserved that heated glare.

"Of course they did! But phone lines in that area are down, and Lex had sent all his employees home before the storm, and when Mrs. Patterson tried driving in since she thought there might be something he needed her to do, the road going in was damaged and she couldn't make it in."

Lex was in trouble? Without pausing to think, Clark headed for the phone. His fingers dialed one number, got the downed tone, he hung up and dialed another number, got the tone again, dialed a third number, got Lex's voice mail. He paused, thinking of dialing a fourth, but then hung up. "Yeah, it's down, and Lex isn't answering his cell."

"What was the third number?" Chloe asked.

"Huh?" 

"You called three numbers. One to the mansion, one to his cell, but what was the third?" Chloe's nose was twitching. Not literally, but really.

Clark looked up for patience. "It's the direct line to the kitchen. We call it to talk to Ms. Stowick about the produce. "

"Oh." Chloe sounded disappointed that it was something so mundane.

His mom stifled a giggle, then cleared her throat. "Why did you come to us, Chloe?"

"Well, Lana wanted to check on you anyhow," Chloe glanced sideways and Lana looked startled but nodded readily, "and Clark'd said something about Lex last night so I thought maybe he knew where Lex might have gone."

Clark turned in the direction of the castle, as if he could see through the miles in-between. "Lex came by before the dance." And had fixed Clark's bowtie with deft, smooth movements, his slim hands right up next to Clark, working on the tie while he stared in Clark's eyes and talked about his father. Touching nothing else before he'd stepped away. Had Clark wanted him to touch anything else? Clark didn't know. He'd been holding his breath, watching more than listening. "Lex was frustrated with his father, with the buy-out, and his dad's shit. Had gone out to clear his head." He'd gone back to the castle after the loft, though, hadn't he? Had Lex been out driving when the tornados hit? Clark had seen Lana when she'd been in trouble... wouldn't he have seen Lex too? He strained his eyes but as good as he'd gotten at the x-ray vision, the way he sometimes saw miles away was apparently not yet under his control.

"Clark." His mom spoke his name disapprovingly. 

It took him a couple of moments to go through what he'd said and find the swear word. "Sorry, Mom."

"What did he say about the buy-out?" Chloe asked, all aquiver again.

Clark grimaced. It had been mostly Lexian speak. Relations built on lies. And didn't that just describe them, even as they were talking friendship? Clark worried. As much as he liked Lex, he couldn't ever tell him the truth because then Lex would know it had all been a lie before. Lex kind of knew that now, but if he ever found out for certain.... "His dad bought the bank so he could foreclose on anybody who misses a payment. Lex was upset by that."

There was a trio of gasps in the room. Clark realized that part hadn't made the local gossip line yet, though he didn't know why not. Too soon before the tornado, probably. Had Lex made it home?

"And you didn't tell me last night?!" Chloe was balling her hands into fists, as if she could go back in time and beat it out of him.

Clark shrugged. "On top of everything else... it was just more of the same. Lex was going to take care of it."

"Like he takes care of everything else!" Chloe burst out. "Clark, you might be in love with him, but he's not a god! He's just a kid a bit older than us and he doesn't know how to deal with his dad! You could see it on his face at his dad's announcement at the plant – he was totally taken by surprise. His father is ruthless, and every time Lex tries to rebel, _we're_ the ones who suffer!"

"Hey!" Clark bristled. "He's putting his neck on the line to _save_ your dad and everybody else! He's sold all his mom's stuff, his cars, his trust... everything! He was even considering selling the Talon too! Don't call him a kid, when he's worked so much for everybody!" In the last year, Lex had spent many long nights working while Clark did his homework. Clark remembered well the time Lex had maneuvered to keep his dad from firing a tenth of the employees. Lex poured himself into that plant, and yet all they thought of him was a kid, less than his dad. 

Lana's gasp belatedly reached his ears and Clark flushed. "And I'm not in love with him." A little late.

"He can't sell the Talon!" Lana cried, her face pale.

Clark blinked. 

Chloe rounded on her friend. "Will you shut up about your precious Talon! For God's sake, we're talking about my _life_ here – my dad's job and Pat's job and Stacy's job and EVERYBODY's jobs! Your stupid sentimental boohoo coffee shop is nothing compared to all that!"

There was a brief stunned silence around the room after Chloe finished shouting. 

His mom cleared her throat, but Clark spoke first. "He didn't sell it. Said he couldn't find a buyer that quick and it would have been at such a loss it wouldn't have made a dent in the amount they had to raise. He got more money out of his mom's jewelry."

"He sold her jewelry?" Out of everything, that, surprisingly, was the thing that made his mom sniffle and she started to raise her hand in protest before dropping it.

"Uh," Clark searched around for another topic. Then he rounded on Chloe, "What do you mean, you could see it on his face? You couldn't see it, you weren't there. We were at school!"

Chloe grimaced. "My dad said."

"Your dad---" Clark cut himself off. He was angry at Chloe, not at her dad. Lex always said that Gabe was one of his biggest supporters, and Clark was sure that whatever Chloe's dad had said, it wasn't like that. Chloe was editorializing. Maybe.

"Girls," his mom stepped over, "I think you probably need to get back. What time did you say the searchers would be by, Lana?"

Effortlessly, his mom took control and soothed out all the hurt feelings and got details out of them and everybody's focus back on the rescue clean up and helping others before she sent them on their way.

After the girls were gone, Clark and his mom looked at each other.

"I have to go check," Clark said, finally. He was torn, needing to keep searching for his dad, and yet, if Lex needed him too...

"Yes," his mom agreed without hesitation, "you do." Her eyes showed the same conflict, yet she hadn't even paused. "You won't be able to do anything different while the searchers are here, so it's good timing. Go check the mansion and make sure that Lex is okay."

Clark loved his mom. He hugged her tight. "You... you take care of yourself, Mom." She was so fragile, bandages still covering her stitches from the night before. So strong, holding herself solid for her son and husband. The bedrock which they relied on.

She kissed him and didn't directly answer. "Go." She gave him a gentle push and Clark let himself be guided out the door.

... ... ... 

As he ran, Clark saw evidence everywhere of the tornadoes. Much of the area undisturbed, then swaths of land devastated. Trees uprooted, branches dropped all over the place, some buildings destroyed, a few dead cows here and there. Things scattered everywhere and in places that made no sense, like the sink by the side of the road, or the bathrobe in a tree. The storm's effects also lingered, making the normal back-lot dirt tracks that Clark used into mud pits and forced him to run along the roads. Not as safe for who might be looking, however on this day, people had much more on their mind than a blur on the side of the road. There weren't many cars out, and those that were had 'rescue' marked on them, or the people inside had pinched, worried faces and weren't looking around.

A hundred feet past the turn off to the castle, Clark skidded to a halt. He whistled as he looked at the huge tree down and over the road, wire fencing tangled in its limbs, electrical lines too. That was an old one. No wonder Mrs. Patterson couldn't make it through. Or anybody out if Lex had tried.

He glanced to each side. A four-wheeler might be able to go off-road on the left side and around, but with the mud, nothing less would make it. And with that electrical line down, most people wouldn't chance it. Clark was a little leery himself. His physical immunity wasn't so recent for him to take it for granted yet. Then there had been that incident with Eric. Clark shuddered.

Regardless, it was probably safer for him to move it than anybody else. On a direct road to Lex's place, though... there would be questions. Clark didn't think he could stand the questions. He wouldn't know anything, though, right? Why would he have had anything to do with it?

With a sigh, he looked up and down the road, then walked to the tree. If he just pushed it... Giving an experimental shove, Clark was horrified to watch the asphalt break under the tree as the limbs dragged through it. 

"Okay..." Clark moved closer and got his hands under the trunk and heaved. The tree resisted for a moment, then went flying off, snapping the power line and carrying pieces of the fencing with it. What was left on the road was passable, at least.

Clark didn't know a thing about a tree, nope, nothing. 

With a small grin, Clark headed again for the castle.

Outside the castle, Clark lost his grin. He swallowed, the lump in his throat hard to get around. The tree hadn't been the only thing to come down in the storm. 

A corner of the castle itself, collapsed, stones and plaster and lumber strewn around the ground. Just a small corner, admittedly... probably not even from the tornado directly, just the storm. 

But why that corner? "Why not the guest wing? Or the garage? Or... anywhere else?" Clark spoke out loud, knowing just what part of the castle that was. The study. Lex's home away from home, where he spent more time than anywhere else.

"God, Lex, please don't have been in there." Clark forced his frozen feet to move.

There was a car in the driveway. Big, black, American-made luxury sedan. Not one of Lex's sexier sport cars, it was one of his dad's. Nobody had said anything about Lionel being around. 

The castle was silent. No sounds coming from it at all. Normally, if Lex and his father were both inside, shouting would be going on at some point during the visit.

Clark glanced to the side where the building had crumpled, and the front door. He probably would be able to get inside easier by the door than scrambling over the collapsed area. He thought about using his x-ray vision and shied away. He'd do it the normal way first.

With a swallow, Clark went inside, through the unlocked door. "Lex?" He could barely hear himself. Clearing his throat, he forced himself to call louder than a whisper. "Lex?" 

Nothing. Clark glanced up the stairs towards the bedrooms, hoping briefly, then he shook his head at himself and headed to the study. The storm had hit about 7pm. Lex, if he had gone back to the castle, would have been in the study. He couldn't have been in the study. Maybe he'd gone out for a break. The kitchen. The dining room for some food. 

Clark kept walking to the study. Every step was heavy, thudding loudly in time with his heart.

The door was shut. It was only ever shut when Lex was inside. Though the door could have closed on its own when the inside collapsed. The wind blowing it shut. Clark didn't believe that.

He listened hard but still couldn't hear anything. He wished super hearing was one of his powers.

With a gulp, Clark opened the door. 

Inside was devastation. The destruction he'd seen from the outside, made worse because it was inside the familiar room. Two walls and the ceiling fallen in, books open, their pages torn, shattered relics everywhere, stained glass broken on the ground. 

There was a dry dark stain over much of the floor, turning white book pages rust red.

There was a leg sticking out from under the debris. 

Clark fell to his knees and started to cry, calling for his friend. Lex was there, he knew it. He knew it, and didn't want to. "Lex..."

/// /// ///

From floating through the darkness, introspective in the inability to move, to sudden awareness of time again. Lex started to raise his head and stopped when he banged it on the beam covering him.

"Lex!" Clark's voice cried out, racked with deep gulping sobs.

Lex tried to respond and found himself unable to, mouth dry and throat parched. He closed his mouth and chewed on his lips, forcing saliva to flow. He swallowed the miniscule moisture and tried again. "Clark." 

Nothing but super-powers would have been able to hear that. Lex blinked and thought he could see cracks of light between the remains that covered him. He took a breath. "Clark!"

The sobbing stopped instantly. "Lex? Lex!!"

Visions of Clark throwing bales of hay around came to mind. "STOP!" Fear gave extra strength to his shout.

"Lex?" 

It was fascinating how much could be told just by the sound of a person's name. Fear and sorrow in the first, incredulous in the second, wonder and joy in the third, and bafflement in the fourth.

"Don't touch the wreckage," Lex ordered.

"I have to get you out from there!"

"Clark, have you ever played spillikins?" There was nothing but the feel of slightly baffled silence. Lex couldn't see it, but he could feel it. He wondered if feeling emotions of others was a new power of his own. He searched for a more common name. "Pick-up sticks?"

"Yeah..."

"Think of what happens to the pile if you pull out the wrong stick." Lex was fairly sure that's what had happened to them before. Not that the area had been any too stable, freshly fallen, storm still raging outside. But pulling his dad out before stabilizing the area hadn't helped. It may not have helped anyhow. Once part of a structure falls, the area around was weakened, and would also collapse. He tightened his hand around his father's. He hadn't let go. He hadn't.

There was the sound of footsteps hastily moving back. Lex smiled mirthlessly.

"Lex... How do I get you out? Umm..." There was the sound of more moving around, off to the left of where Lex lay.

A loud gulp. "Lex. Your dad..."

"I know." Lex closed his eyes. He relaxed his grip on his dad's hand, but didn't let go. Last night, Lionel's hand had stiffened in rigor mortis, gradually tightening until it had started loosening again. Lex hadn't been conscious through the early stages, but since had been using it as a way to track time. Six to eight hours for it to have reached the hands, maximum stiffness at twelve. It would be gone again 36 to 48 hours after that. Cold could extend that period of time. Lex had wondered if he would even be discovered before then. "I know." He hadn't let go.

"I have to get you out of here." Restless movements around the room, though thankfully sounding far from the debris.

Lex shook his head slightly and opened his eyes again. It didn't help. "Call the rescue group. They have professional equipment. Cribbing, shoring. They can stabilize it and they know how to get people out."

"The phone lines are down."

"So go out to where you can talk to them," Lex said patiently. He coughed. It was dry and dusty.

"I can’t leave you!"

Lex sighed very softly, hopefully softer than Clark could hear. "It's okay." He twitched his lips. "I'm not going anywhere."

Footsteps stopped. Voice from a little lower down, as if Clark was crouching. "That's not funny."

Lex could almost see the scowl he knew must be on Clark's face. Of all the people to find him. He'd both hoped and feared Clark would come. It was funny, really. He was shattered... but he still wanted Clark. He wanted Clark more than anything, and yet didn't want to cause his friend any pain. And now Clark was here and Lex was asking him to be gone. Lex lived in a world of contradictions. Life and death in the same place.

"I'm not dead yet." Lex smiled in the darkness, listening to the slightly stunned surprise of the indrawn breath. He couldn't resist. "Only mostly dead."

"That's not..." Clark choked out, half-giggling in a horrified manner, "it's not funny." He broke down in more tears and laughter.

Lex wished he could put a hand on Clark's shoulder. Touch him. Hold him. See him. He laughed. "Is too."

"Is not."

"Is too."

"Is... oh Lex."

They were both silent for awhile after that. Lex didn't really want to send Clark away, even if it would be better. Truthfully, Clark probably could save him, but he would have to get all the rocks and beams off Lex moving so quickly they couldn't shift and fall, and then get Lex out even faster and both of them away. Nobody could do that with normal human strength and speed. Lex thought about apologizing for being conscious. Then he thought about being unconscious. It wouldn't take too much, except he was fairly awake now. He was injured, he knew... but he also thought he was less injured than he had been. He opened and closed his right hand, touching the stone near it. He hadn't been able to do that earlier.

"So, how's the rest of Smallville?" Lex forced himself to ask. "That was quite the storm."

"Tornado."

"Excuse me?"

The sound of a throat being cleared. "There were three tornadoes that came through during the storm. Everybody is still cleaning up."

Lex jerked up, hitting his head again and sinking back. The beam above him quivered.

"Lex, be careful!" Scrambling sounds as Clark apparently got closer. 

Lex bit his lip hard before taking in another breath. "How is everybody? Lana? Your parents? Chloe?"

There was not an immediate reassurance of everything being okay. Lex let go of his dad's hand for the first time and he reached in the direction of his friend. He ran up against wood. He tried to force himself not to move more.

"They're... they're all okay." Clark's voice, hesitant and reassuring but unsure. He was a lousy liar. 

Clark cleared his throat. "Lana's truck got swept up in one of the tornadoes, but she fell out – only scrapes and bruises. She's helping with the Red Cross now. Chloe's fine, and Pete – we were at the dance. There aren't a lot of injuries, though a lot of stuff came down. Lots of cleanup work still ongoing, and they're still getting people out of buildings. Mostly just broken legs and such, though."

There was a glaring omission in list. "Your parents?" Lex asked softly. He didn't reach for his dad's hand again, pressing his own instead against the wood, trying to get through it to Clark.

"They're fine," Clark said shortly.

Lex had had a year to refine his 'Clark is lying' meter. This one was off the gauge. "Clark," Lex warned, telling him he knew it wasn't the truth and he was going to push it. The voice didn't always work as well on Clark as on his or his dad's employees, but it was worth a try.

The sound of clothing shifting, of a body inching closer then stopping. "Mom's fine," Clark finally said. "Dad... Dad's missing. He was outside when it hit."

If Lex could have gotten up and moved right then, he would have. He would have moved heaven and hell and the very Earth itself. Clark couldn't lose his dad. He couldn't. But Lex was stuck under here. "What are you doing here?" He clamped his mouth shut but too late, the words had already gotten out.

Clark laughed a little bitterly. "There's a search team looking for Dad right now. I was out all night... Chloe said you hadn't made the buy-out meeting."

Involuntarily, Lex snorted out a laugh. "I don't think that's going to be a problem now." Not with his dad stiff and cold beside him. 

"Lex, I'm sorry."

Lex was numb. He remembered wanting his father to die. He remembered reaching for his father to live. Then his father was dead and he'd thought he was soon to follow. He wasn't so sure now, but regardless, he knew he wanted Clark's father to live.

"Go and help them," Lex urged. "You can tell the rescue teams on your way and they'll come and help me when they have a chance. Everything is stable now, I'll be fine."

"I can't leave you, Lex," Clark whispered, his voice tortured. 

Now wasn't the time to urge Clark to leave, Lex could hear it in Clark's voice. Truthfully, he didn't want Clark to go. He liked hearing Clark's voice, knowing Clark was near. It warmed him that Clark had come to check on him. It astonished him, with Clark's father missing. He hadn't thought he'd rated that high in Clark's world. 

Clark had so many friends, such a loving family. Yet he welcomed Lex in happily, responding to Lex's clumsy overtures with homespun goodness and brilliant smiles. Even the mounds of teenage angst that he brought with him didn't deter Lex's happiness in having Clark for a friend. Only the lies did that. The lies and the mystery. He wanted to believe in Clark so badly, yet he was trained from birth to be suspicious and Clark hit all his buttons. Such a contradiction. Such a miracle.

"Lex?" Clark's voice was scared, high-pitched and nervous.

Lex realized he'd drifted off. "I---" his voice choked. He coughed, getting the saliva again. 

"Are you thirsty? Can I get you some water?"

Lex smiled ruefully. How did Clark think he'd be able to drink it?

"Um..."

Sounded like Clark was realizing it too.

"'S okay. I'm okay." Lex wasn't so sure about that second part, but he knew he was better now than he'd been before.

"Lex..." Clark's voice broke.

Lex lifted his left hand and pressed it against the wood between him and Clark. "Tell me about your father. Where was he going? Were there shelters near? If not the shelter, a neighbor he might have been helping?"

The silence became that of things held back.

Lex narrowed his eyes. "Clark."

Clark cleared his throat. "He was out checking on the cows---"

"Clark." Lex sharpened his voice, his instincts coming to the fore.

Clark sighed. "He went out after Nixon."

His head hit the wood, hard. "Ouch." Lex sank back down again and wished he had a hand free to rub his head. Regretfully, both arms were trapped in different ways. He was pretty sure his right arm was broken, even though he had feeling back in his hand again. And his left... Lex touched the wood and refused to think about his dad's hand where he'd let it go. "Roger Nixon?"

"You said you didn't know him," Clark's voice quavered. He obviously wanted to demand answers from Lex yet was reluctant to while Lex was trapped.

Lex closed his eyes. All on him. It was his fault, again.

"I know him." What was the point of trying to keep anything back at this point? His dad was dead, Clark's was missing. Would what he knew of Roger help to find them? "He was trying to blackmail me."

"Oh? Oh! Well, no wonder you didn't want to say you knew him!" Clark's voice was full of horror that somebody would do that and understanding of Lex.

Lex snorted and let his hand drift over the grain on the beam. He thought he might have picked up a splinter but could barely feel it. "I blackmailed him back. Threatened his brother. Then sent him out to find out more about the bridge accident."

There was a fearful silence from the other side of the debris. A silence filled with astonishment and horror. The sort of silence that on a normal day would have sent Clark running as far away from Lex as he could.

"I thought... why do you... the bridge..." Clark's voice stuttered through painful fragments of thought. Then he burst out, "You're alive! Isn't that enough?"

Lex opened and closed his right hand, the hand that for most of the long night he'd been unable to feel, unable to move. The taste of blood was in his mouth. He was sure he'd been cut badly on his legs, part of the stained glass windows coming in at him, or maybe it was his desk. By all rights, he should be as dead as his father, even if his own death wouldn't have been as quick. "No, it's not enough." A ripped open car roof, windshield glass shattered as if a boulder had come through it, Lex, alive, not a mark on him. Clark, alive, when Lex would have sworn he'd hit him. "He made a computer model, based on the car skids and the indentations in the bridge railing and on my front bumper. The car... _I_ hit you. I hit you. I lost control of the steering and the car was fishtailing and you were there and I couldn't stop, I couldn't swerve... I tried to swerve, but the car wouldn't respond... I hit you. Just as I knew I had. Mathematics proved it, science confirmed. And I still don't know how the hell I survived. Or you. I don't know. I should have died. I'm glad you're not dead."

Clark whimpered. It was a sound of distress so earth-shattering that it made Lex feel like the most worthless piece of dirt on the planet. He had caused this. He'd caused this and he couldn't put it right again. Humpty Dumpty was shattered, and Lex was the king's horses and men and he couldn't put it back together again. Or maybe he was Humpty Dumpty and nobody would be putting him together at all.

Idly, Lex wondered just how much blood he'd lost and how much he'd regained, and just how bad his head wound had been anyhow. Maybe he was hallucinating this.

"You're glad I'm alive?? But you sic a reporter on me?! Do you know what he did?? He tried to kill me! Exploded the truck, just to see if I would burn or not!" 

This time, as Lex jerked up, the pain was more than just an ouch, and for awhile, there was nothing.

"Lex, Lex, Lex... oh, please, Lex, please. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Don't..." a hitch in the soft voice, "God, Lex. I shouldn't have yelled at you. Please, please be okay..."

The blood taste in his mouth was fresh this time, not old. Lex swallowed, trying not to throw up. He'd been wondering earlier if he could ever feel pain again, or if he was permanently numb to it. That question was answered. Pain was sharp and explosive, vibrating through one end of his skull to the other, with no hair to buffer or soothe it. He tried to say something reassuring to Clark, but it came out as a moan.

"Lex!" Shuffling sounds from what seemed like right next to him. "Don't move, Lex, don't move. When you banged your head earlier... the whole pile _shifted_. Oh, God, I was so worried..."

If Lex was unconscious, that would have been a perfect time for Clark to get him out. Lex thought he'd done rather too good a job at scaring Clark into not trying. And how did Clark know he'd hit his head? Lex blinked at the vague glimmers of light that were all that were making their way through the rubble, and he closed his eyes. "I told Roger to leave you alone. I told him... Once he started sniffing around you," Lex swallowed more blood, "I told him, for his brother's sake. It should have been enough. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Clark's laughter was completely humorless. "You're supposed to be the sophisticated one, Lex, the one who knows people. Heck, I've only been working with Chloe for three years, and _I_ know better than that. He's a reporter. You gave him a story. You tied it up with a cute little bow and handed me right to him."

Lex tilted his head from side to side, wanting to deny it yet confronted with the brutal truth. "Dad has dozens of reporters working with him. I have a few. They want money. That's all they want. Not the truth, but money. Money or position. He's the one that blackmailed me first. He should only have wanted money, nothing else."

"And you call _me_ naive! Would you stop investigating the bridge for money? You won't even stop for friendship."

There was absolutely nothing Lex could say to that. With his left hand, he searched with his limited range until he found his dad's hand again and tried to hold it. His fingers wouldn't fit quite right around the hand again, or maybe that was his dad's hand, stiff in death. Lex had thought he was better than his father. He really had. Shattered into a thousand pieces and he'd done it to himself. The ceiling falling was less than what he'd done to Clark. His father's hand was cold. So cold.

"Lex..." Clark sounded heart-broken. "Okay, Lex, I do it too. I... I assume things of people, and they're not true, and I _am_ naive. I hide things from my friends and I still expect them to be my friends. I don't tell you anything, and I lie to your face, and you're just supposed to accept it because you're my friend and I want you to be my friend so badly." 

The sentence ended on a fragment, evidence of Clark's own mindset, apparently. And Clark's father was still out there, missing, with a completely amoral reporter who would apparently kill for what he wanted, even if blowing up the truck hadn't worked. Which it sounded like it hadn't. Lex wondered if Clark realized he'd even said that when he'd been yelling.

"Clark, is my desk still intact?" Lex didn't think so, but he wasn't sure.

"Uh, no. No, it's not." Clark gulped.

Lex wondered what it looked like from the other side. "You'll have to go up to my bedroom, then. Second dresser on the left, bottom drawer. There's a bunch of phones in it. Get one of the ones with a purple tag, and one of the ones with a white tag. There should be spare batteries on the top of the dresser with full charges."

"Uh..." Clark's pause went on. "Oh. For the rescue team?"

Lex snorted. "For Nixon. The purple tag is my number. If you call Nixon from it, he'll probably answer, and then you might be able to get some information out of him as to where he and your dad are."

"Oh." Clark had been reduced to repeating his monosyllables. "You think they're together?"

One way or another, they had to be. Lex wasn't saying what the other way would be. "They're together. If they were separated in the storm, you would have found one of them by now. For both to be gone, and you not able to find them... they're probably trapped somewhere." Unless, "Did Nixon have his car?" But Clark had to have already thought of that.

"Mom said Dad was chasing him on foot. I don't know where his car might have been. It wasn't on the farm." Clark was sounding scared again, probably thinking about what might have happened to his dad. The other ways that Lex wasn't saying, didn't mean Clark wasn't thinking them, hadn't been thinking them all along.

"Go get the phones, Clark."

Clark stirred, rattling some debris as he moved, but he didn't leave. "What's the other phone for?"

"That's so I can call you later. You don't want to answer my phone," Lex said wryly. "Believe me, you don't want to answer mine right now. In fact, you should probably put it on mute the second you turn it on. Use it to call Nixon, and then ignore it. When the rescue team gets me out later, I'll call you on the disposable."

"Lex..." Clark hesitated some more.

"Clark, go get the phones." Lex tried to put as much patience and command into his voice as he could, assuring with the command that he'd be fine.

"Okay." The sound of more things stirring, and footsteps, then nothing.

Lex drew in a few breaths, trying to get used to being alone again, and hoping the figurative walls wouldn't close in on him.

"Okay, got them. What's Nixon's number?"

That had been entirely too fast. Okay, so Lex couldn't see anything, but still... it was like Clark wasn't even trying anymore.

"Lex?"

If Lex could have pinched the bridge of his nose, he would have. Nixon's number was on a card in the side compartment of his desk. "Give me a minute." One didn't memorize numbers nowadays, one punched them in and let the phone remember them. But that was a new phone Clark had. Set to the same number, but without the history on it. What was that darn number? Card. Visualize the card...

"Uh, Lex, what's the number?"

"Just a damn minute!" Lex realized what he'd said and he let all his breath out in a long sigh, feeling the weight of rocks on his body shifting with the motion. "I'm sorry. I'm not really at my best right now, Clark. Just be patient with me for a moment."

Clark laughed briefly, then settled into giggling. "It's okay, Lex."

Lex loved that boy. He loved him for his friendship and his loyalty and his way of looking at the world that saw the good and the light. He loved him in appropriate, friendly sort of ways, and he loved him in all sorts of horribly inappropriate ways that wouldn't be right for a fifteen year old. For Lex at fifteen, maybe, but not Clark, and not Lex with Clark. How could he ever have endangered Clark? Mentally, Lex picked up Nixon's card and looked at it. He spoke the numbers slowly once, then looked at the card again and said them again. He hoped he had it right.

"Got it," Clark said, accompanied by the sounds of scribbling. Apparently Clark had opted for the old-fashioned ways instead of the new-fangled. A good precaution, too, not to accidentally call the number before being ready to do something about it.

He should be ready, though. He should be going. Clark should be heading out to rescue his father from Lex's mistakes, and not hang around here talking to a shattered pile of rubble.

Lex closed his eyes. "Go find your father, Clark." He held the fingers of his father's hand. Clark's father was better, and he loved Clark. Clark's father couldn't die. Clark had to rescue him.

There were sounds of footsteps pacing around through the room. With his head on the ground, they echoed oddly as he heard them both audibly and physically. 

"I'll be alright, Clark," Lex repeated again, patiently.

"No, you won't be," Clark's voice was frightened but firm. "The stuff on top of you moved when you hit your head. No guarantee it isn't going to move again. And you need help... You're hurt. I don't want to wait for the rescue people even if they do know kibbing – what if they make a mistake?"

"Cribbing," Lex corrected. Clark was older than his years sometimes, making Lex forget about his youth. Other times, he brought Lex into the childhood he'd never had, making Lex as young as he. What was seven years between them? The two of them were more complete than anybody else Lex had ever met. 

"Lex, please..." Clark's voice was sad. Lex didn't want Clark to be sad.

With a sigh, Lex opened his eyes and blinked at the fuzzy light. "There's a beam directly over me. It must be resting on something else for it not to have crushed me. It's over my head and I think most of my upper body, though there are other things on my right arm and legs. If there is something that could raise that beam up very very quickly, and then pull me out in a few seconds... it will take a brief amount of time for everything else to start falling, if that beam is lifted up quickly. It all has to be done very fast, though. Otherwise I'll end up like my dad. Which most people say is what comes with the Luthor name anyhow." Humpty Dumpty probably hadn't looked any too good after the wall either.

"Stop it," Clark admonished. 

Lex grinned briefly at this normal reaction. Clark hated for Lex to compare himself to Luthors, even if Lex was one. Lex gripped his father's fingers one last time, then let him go. If Clark was going to do it, Lex couldn't bring his father along. Not this time. Not ever again.

The sound of a throat swallowing was audible beyond the rubble. Lex shook his head. "If you want to wait, I think I might be unconscious in a little bit." It was hard for him to concentrate on anything right now. Probably wouldn't be too long. And he could always bang his head again.

"No!" This time, Clark was angry. Who needed visuals, when one had such a forthright voice? "Lex, don't even think about that! How could you think that...? You don't need to be unconscious, damn it."

Lex had driven Clark to swearing. "I've always been unconscious before." He probably shouldn't be saying things like that, but his sense of caution had been lost.

"You get hurt a lot! Too much. Too much..." Clark gulped, and when he started speaking again, his voice wavered. "Hold on, Lex. Or rather, don't hold onto anything. Just... just be ready. I don't want to hurt you."

"You can't," Lex breathed, and held his gaze open, waiting.

It all happened within seconds. Trying to make sense of it later, Lex thought there was a sound, as the rubble blasted away and the beam lifted off him. Then he was flying through the air, as if on a zipline, held in strong arms with a body hunched over him. Then they were in the hallway, and it sounded like the rest of the study was collapsing. They stayed in the hallway for a couple of seconds, while Clark looked at the walls, then they were gone again, ziplining through the mansion and ending up in Lex's bedroom, where Lex was carefully laid on the bed.

Lex stared in amazement at Clark, not letting go of his own grip, his left arm somehow having migrated over Clark's shoulders and holding him tight. 

Clark squirmed, not fully releasing Lex either, and anxiously looking at Lex. He didn't say anything, but alternated between blushing and turning pale. They were a foot apart, both eyes wide, just staring at each other.

With a heave, Lex pulled himself up to Clark's level and kissed him. 

His right arm still wasn't working, but his left was just fine, and he dug in and kept himself close, pressing his lips against Clark's, his tongue licking at Clark's lips and then finding his way in as they loosened. 

Clark made a sound rather like an animal eeping in the night and then was silent with Lex's tongue in his mouth. He held onto Lex and didn't move.

Reality set in, and Lex abruptly let Clark go, falling back against the pillows and getting ready for the slap.

None came, and Lex looked up to see Clark running his finger over his lips, his gaze unfocused. 

"I'm sorry, Clark," Lex started, having to at least try to apologize.

Then Clark kissed him.

It was some indeterminate length of time later, could have been minutes, could have been hours, when Lex next came back to himself. He was lying down, pressed firmly into the bed. Clark was still kissing him, and had a hand roaming down Lex's chest, wide fingers splayed out possessively over Lex's skin. Another hand was under Lex's head, holding him at just the right angle to be kissed. Lex's hand was tangled in Clark's hair.

Lex thought it was real. He didn't think he yet merited a place in heaven, not especially with what he'd just carelessly done to Clark and his parents. And yet, here they were. But they couldn't be, not yet.

"Clark," Lex turned his head to get his words out, exposing his neck to being nibbled up and almost losing his train of thought. "Your dad. You have to rescue your dad."

The nibbling stopped, and Clark moved his head back, though he left his hands on Lex. His green eyes were torn between exultant and unhappy. 

There was no worse time. Well, Lex could actually think of lots worse times. He hadn't meant for this. He just... Clark had saved him. Openly saved him. Cared more for him than for his secrets. Though Clark saved lots of people, Lex knew. Nothing really that made Lex any more special than any of the rest of them. A person in need of rescuing, and Clark had rescued him. If Clark had slapped him, Lex would have deserved it for the presumption. But instead Clark had kissed him back...

"Lex," Clark said, his voice caught between that same mixture of unhappy and hungry.

Belatedly, Lex let go of Clark's hair, touching Clark's cheek gently as he moved his hand away. Clark leaned into the brief touch, and Lex felt the world fall out from underneath him. He was so far gone. Falling from the wall, uncaring to what might lie below. There was this moment now, with Clark, and that was all. Lex wanted it to last forever.

"Go," Lex tried to put a smile on. "I'll be okay now."

Clark stood up, looking Lex up and down. His eyes lost the besotted look and turned alarmed. "No way am I leaving you here!" Clark scooped Lex up in his arms again, holding his whole weight easily. "I'm taking you to the hospital."

"You can't explain---" Lex's protest was lost in another whirl through space. He closed his eyes and turned his head into Clark's chest as this one kept going.

The motion stopped when they were at the hospital, in the ambulance receiving zone. Nobody was around at the moment. 

Clark put Lex down on a nearby gurney. "Trust me, Lex. They're not going to question it. Not right now and probably not ever. This is Smallville." With a grin, he leaned over and kissed Lex, a gentle brushing of their lips together. 

Then Clark was gone, and the "patient arrived" bell was ringing, bringing nurses rushing to Lex's side. He would have rather had Clark.

/// /// ///

Jonathan paced around the small cellar area. When he'd been young, he and the others had played in it, pretending the church kept bodies in it like a crypt and it was spooky and scary and huge, with places to hide and to play practical jokes on each other. As an adult, the area was small and cramped.

To be fair, it was really large and spacious. But trapped for what felt like almost a whole day in there with a person he didn't trust... it was small and cramped.

"Stop pacing!" Roger growled from his corner where he had hunkered down. 

It wasn't the first time Roger had yelled at him. Jonathan was tired and cranky and really wanted to go home but they were trapped, and he couldn't sit still. 

After the church had been torn down after the meteors wrecked it, the cellar was cleared out and supposedly blocked off so the kids couldn't get in. At the time of the storm, with a tornado heading directly their way and grandfather trees being torn out of the ground in the twister's path, Jonathan had been glad that somebody had mucked up and the cellar was still accessible for them to get in and be out of the way of heaven's fury.

Now, though... Jonathan went up the ladder again and gave the wooden roof another heave. Nothing. There were thin rays of light coming through, providing their little bit of illumination and proving that there really was a world outside, but something had come down over the door and pinned it down good. He and Roger had tried together and couldn't budge it.

"I doubt if anything has changed in the last ten minutes," Roger bit out.

Jonathan may not have killed the reporter because of what he knew about the spaceship, however if they were trapped in here together for much longer, he might kill him just because of how _annoying_ he was. He suspected Roger felt the same.

"Your adopted alien "son" could clear that off without any problems," Roger mocked. "A tractor, a trailer, a tree, no problem. Lift it up and let us out. Or let _you_ out – he'd probably just put it back down again for me."

And they were back to that again. "My son wouldn't do that." Clark was a good person, better than his father most days, and a son any parent would be proud to have. His origins didn't matter. What mattered was the person he was inside. Not that the rest of the world seemed to think that, as people kept proving over and over again. Jonathan felt a pang that he wasn't better able to protect his son. He tried again to explain just what a normal person Clark was, and how he was a moral, upright citizen. 

Roger talked back, and Jonathan wasn't sure what the other man believed. At times, he made Jonathan think that he had finally accepted that Clark wasn't a threat and that things were going to be okay. At other points, he scared Jonathan for what he might do when they got out. 

Maybe it was better if they didn't get out. Jonathan didn't want to die, but he would give his life for his son, and that was truth.

A shrill beeping sound rang through the stone chamber, echoing off the walls.

Both men startled, then Roger scrambled across the room, reaching for his jacket he'd tossed in a corner. 

"I thought you couldn't get reception!" Jonathan blinked. The reporter had tried earlier.

"I couldn't! Shut up!" Roger grabbed the phone and looked at the display. "Lex!" He answered it. "Hello? Lex?"

Lex Luthor? Jonathan's eyes narrowed. Despite Luthor's protests to Clark, Jonathan had _known_ there was a connection! Of all people, he couldn't let Luthor know about Clark. The father/son pair scared Jonathan spitless with how they could screw people over and he wasn't ever going to let that happen to Clark. He advanced forward, not sure what he was going to do, but knowing he couldn't let Roger and Lex talk.

"Clark? What the fuck are you doing on Lex's phone?" Roger sounded surprised, pissed off, and uncertain.

Jonathan blinked. Then he reached out and grabbed the phone. "Clark? Son?"

"Dad! Oh God, you really _are_ alive! Thank God!" Clark's voice was scratchy and barely coming through on the phone, but there was no mistaking that it was really him and he was overjoyed.

On his own side, Jonathan gave a sigh of relief. He'd been worried about Clark, though theoretically everybody at the school should have been okay. Storm shelters. "How's Martha?"

"She's fine, Dad. Dad, where are you?"

"For God's sake! Tell him to get us out of here!" Roger tried to grab the phone back, but Jonathan blocked him. 

The reporter was, however, right. Now that Jonathan knew his wife and son were okay. "Son, we're out by Hobson's pond, inside the crypt of the old church---- Clark? Clark?" There was nothing but silence on the phone. Jonathan looked at it and shook it slightly.

Roger tried again and this time successfully grabbed it away. He made a noise of disgust. "Out of power. Battery ran down. What rotten stupid timing!"

Jonathan glanced around the stone walls. "I'm surprised it lasted this long."

"It was on standby, which lasts longer than talking. But damn it..."

"Clark got through to us, he knows where we are now."

"Did he hear all that?"

Jonathan had been wondering that himself. "Hopefully."

They eyed each other in the dim streaks of light and neither one brought up the Luthor connection. 

...

As time went by, Jonathan worried that maybe they weren't where they thought he was. Or that the whole cellar had been picked up by the tornado and dropped somewhere else. But they had to have been where he'd thought they were for him to have found it in the first place, and even a tornado couldn't just scoop a cellar out from the ground. Clark, though, should have found them by now.

Roger was sniping at Jonathan, Jonathan was sniping at Roger, and they were both accusing the other of having ruined their chances to get rescued. Jonathan was still worried about what Roger might do, and was perhaps less worried about rescue than Roger was. The self-imposed ban on talking about Luthor hadn't lasted, but neither had Roger given up any information. Just that it had been Lex's cell phone and he was a reporter, of course he had Luthor's number – it was his excuse to be in Smallville. Which reminded Jonathan again about what Roger _had_ been doing.

He thought, maybe, that he'd finally talked Roger into believing that Clark was a good person. When Clark rescued them, then maybe Roger would see. He just didn't know otherwise what he was going to do. Clark was more precious to him than anything. Roger just had to see what a good person Clark was.

... 

Finally. Finally there was the sound of things happening above ground. Things dragged across the ground, tossed around, minor earthquakes in the crypt, an increase in the rays of light. Then the whole cellar door was torn off, letting in a whole heap of daylight that was too bright, but Jonathan didn't want to look away from.

He and Roger swarmed up the ladder one after another like raccoons that had been trapped in a culvert during a storm, desperate for freedom and light and air. 

"Dad!" Clark caught him up in a giant Clark-hug. His son was now taller than him and it was still a strange feeling, yet wonderful at the same time.

Jonathan returned the hug. "Clark." 

After a moment, he put the teenager a step away so he could look at him. Clark seemed like he was okay; eyes a little too bright from excitement and he was fidgeting in that way that said too much energy and not enough food, but he was otherwise bursting with health and looked good. 

"Did you have any problems?" Jonathan glanced over to the now-cleared area around the cellar.

Clark shrugged. "It took awhile to figure out where you were. I had 'pond' and 'crypt', but there wasn't anything on the maps for a crypt near any ponds, and mom didn't remember any either. We finally had to call your old friend Bill and he came up with Hobson's Pond and the old church. Then I got out here... and still couldn't see you or where you might be. Eventually, I just started throwing things around hoping I'd uncover something."

The area around sure looked like a tornado had gone through. A tornado and Clark combined. Luckily, there wasn't much difference. "In the old days, they probably mixed lead with the concrete to make the walls more stable."

Clark snorted. "Great. Just great. Do me a favor and don't get trapped in one of those again, Dad."

Jonathan grinned. "I'll try not to, Son."

At that moment, they both remembered that there had been a third person and looked for him.

Roger was coming back out of the cellar again, dragging a shovel up with him. Both Kents stared in puzzled surprise, watching as he started digging into the ground on the far side of the door, where the main church would have been. Then he bent over and started picking up some green rocks.

"Oh holy hell..." Jonathan groaned. "Roger, leave those alone. They're dangerous."

"Dangerous?" Roger tossed one casually in his hand. "You don't say. Dangerous to whom?" He suddenly threw the one he held at Clark, and then lobbed several more their direction. 

It was too fast for Clark to react, not expecting it. Clark might have speed greater than any human, but he had been trained to only use it after thinking about it, not reflexively. Then the rocks were there around them and Clark was crumpling up on the ground, moaning as his skin and veins started to turn green.

"Clark!" Jonathan started throwing rocks away, but Roger kept throwing more over. The meteor that had destroyed the church must have left a stockpile. The reaction was so obvious with Clark crumpled up near the rocks; it was amazing that they'd never connected the rocks with Clark getting sick before, but by some miracle there hadn't been any near the farm.

In frustration, Jonathan left Clark and headed for Nixon. "Roger, I thought you understood! Clark is just a boy – he's my son!"

"He's not human, you deluded hick!" Roger stopped picking up rocks and grabbed the shovel instead. "He's not your son, he's an alien, and the people have a right to know!" He swung the shovel at Jonathan. Jonathan dodged and grabbed at the handle but missed. Jonathan was no stranger to wrestling and fighting, but he wasn't at his best after having been awake for over a day. Roger had actually gotten some sleep, and he also had the strength of a fanatic. But Jonathan was protecting his son.

They grappled back and forth, struggling over the shovel. Jonathan wrenched it from Roger's hands, but then tripped over tree limbs as he stepped backward. 

Roger grabbed the shovel again and swung it like a club. It hit Jonathan over the ribs and he grunted, curling away from the pain. "Roger!"

"If you won't give him to me, I'll take him instead. Who needs a spaceship, when one has the alien?" Roger's lips curled in a parody of a grin, even as he lifted the shovel again for a stronger strike down.

There was a loud crack through the clearing and Roger's eyes widened and then all light left them and he crumpled to the ground, the shovel landing next to him and somehow missing Jonathan on the way down. Jonathan heaved the body out of his way and looked wildly around. At the far side of the clearing stood Lex with a gun.

"Mr. Kent, are you okay?" 

Jonathan grunted something affirmative, he wasn't sure what, as he continued to look around. There. Clark was lying in the pile of green rocks, as crumpled on the ground as Roger was, though the moans made it clear that he was still alive. Jonathan scrambled to him, throwing rocks left and right – anywhere as long as they were away from his son. "Clark, are you okay?"

Clark panted, his breaths still harsh, even as his color started to come back. "I'll survive," he said weakly, with a small reassuring grin. A grin that faded as he looked to one side.

Lex had walked across the clearing and was standing over Roger's body, looking down at it. The gun was in his left hand, now at his side. His right arm was in a sling. Even as they watched, Lex swayed slightly where he stood.

Clark was up like a flash and over at his friend's side, steadying him while managing to avoid both the sling and the gun. "Lex, are you okay?"

"There's a record here, skipping along the track, with variations on a theme," Lex murmured, not looking away from Roger.

Lex looked bruised in spirit, his normal, barely-contained energy non-existent and running on fumes. Actually, he looked bruised in flesh too, now that Jonathan looked closer. That broken arm, a bandage over part of his head, the way he stood so carefully controlling pain... What had happened to that boy? Had he heard what Nixon had said about Clark? He had to have... he'd been right there. But he'd shot Roger instead.

"What are you doing out of the hospital?" Clark said anxiously, running his gaze over Lex in a way that suggested he was x-raying him. He had a careful hand on Lex's shoulder but was otherwise not touching him.

"I don't stay in hospitals," Lex said again in that low, barely-there voice. "Too... hospitally. I let them have their fun with my arm but that was it. Too much to do. Funny how a single bullet can kill."

The last part was run right into the sentence before it, so it took a moment to realize what he'd said and how very unrelated to the hospital it was. 

"Guns kill," Jonathan said. He wanted to say it sharply, but Lex was in no condition for it, plus had just possibly saved Jonathan's life and Clark's too with his actions. Jonathan wasn't the sort of person who could kill... but he'd thought about it a few times, particularly the night before, chasing after Nixon. He would have been happier giving up his own life to save his son, rather than taking another's... but he couldn't say he wasn't at least partially relieved not to have to worry about Roger Nixon anymore. Now, he just had to worry about Lex.

Clark shot an angry stare at Jonathan, obviously picking up on the sharpness Jonathan had thought he'd modulated.

Lex, however, grinned a little and moved. It wasn't until he moved that it became obvious how still he'd been before. One-handedly, Lex flicked the safety on the gun and put it back in the holster under the sling and his jacket. Jonathan wondered how he'd gotten it on. "I've had all the gun safety classes drilled into me over and over again," Lex said with a bit more animation. "Don't ever point a gun at a person unless you are prepared to shoot, and to know what it can do." He looked at Roger and shrugged briefly. "It was his life or yours, and I wasn't about to let Clark lose his father." He turned and walked a few steps away, leaving Clark standing where he'd been. "I just... I've seen single gunshots that have killed before. I've also seen a lot more single gunshots that haven't killed. If a single shot always killed, I'd be dead three times over by now. Cats have nine lives, Luthors have a baker's dozen, but even those run out after awhile. I shot to kill, because that's what you do with a gun... but I wasn't expecting him to actually die. Not that quickly, not like that. One bullet. Gone."

"You've never shot anybody before," Jonathan said in... well, he wasn't exactly surprised, because how many people went around killing other people? But he wasn't expecting to have to talk a Luthor through shock reaction.

"I've killed before," Lex said dreamily, his mind in the past, probably somewhere in those previous shootings he'd mentioned. "Not that I knew it, but the end result of being a Luthor is always somebody else's blood. Sometimes our own."

"Lex..." Clark started towards his friend, but before he got to him, Lex's phone rang.

With a sigh, Lex shook off his fugue and by the time he answered the phone, he was all business. One of those weird personality shifts that made Jonathan not trust him, because you never knew just who he was. 

"Lex Luthor. No. Yes. Yes, thank you, it's been... very sudden. No, they're still working that out. The doctor still has to... it'll be a few more hours. In the meantime, call Patrick at the bank. He's handling the financial end of that part. I understand. There will be a stockholders meeting tomorrow. Somebody will email with the details. Yes. No. No. Okay, yes, thank you. Goodbye."

The Kents stared at Lex as he put his phone away.

"Tomorrow?" Clark finally asked. "But Lex, you _can't_!"

"Business and politics stop for no man, Clark," Lex said with that half-laugh that seemed to conceal a wealth of bitterness. "Not even my dad."

Jonathan put that together with the earlier emphasis on _wasn't going to let Clark lose his father_ and the overall bruised look upon Lex's soul and came up with a conclusion that really shouldn't have been possible. He shot a questioning look towards Clark.

Clark glanced away from Lex and met the look, grimacing and essentially acknowledging it.

Huh. 

That was... Jonathan cleared his throat. "Let's head back to the farm."

He took the few steps necessary to catch up to Clark and Lex and then they fell in line with him as they walked together. Lex was between Jonathan and Clark, and didn't seem to object to the placement. He walked closer to Clark, but that was only natural. Especially as Clark was walking close to Lex. 

"But Lex, what are you doing here?" Clark asked as if they were resuming some mythological conversation. Jonathan perked up his ears.

Lex shrugged. "My phone has GPS on it. When you stopped moving, I followed."

Jonathan glanced with a frown at Lex's pocket where he'd put the phone. Clark, on the other hand, reached into his own pocket and pulled out an identical looking phone. "You bugged the phone?" he said incredulously.

He hadn't even known that Clark _could_ look suspiciously at Lex. Guess it wasn't always roses there.

Lex rolled his eyes. "GPS comes with the phones. Tracking against theft. I was just going to call you on the other one and ask if you needed any help, but then I thought about what you were going to say, which would be "no, Lex, we're fine, and you should be in the hospital" and I didn't feel like having that conversation. So I came out. I wanted to help, with your father." His voice faltered at the end.

Jonathan cleared his throat, "Thank you, Lex." He remembered the shovel coming down at him. His ribs still hurt from the first hit, and that second one had been heading right at his head. "You saved my life." Possibly. It may not have come to that, but Clark had been taken out by the meteor rocks, and Roger had been determined and willing to kill. He would give Lex the rescue, because Lex had done his best and stepped in at the right moment. Jonathan repeated, "Thank you."

He would worry about what Lex had heard later. And, he hated to think it, but if Lionel really was dead, they had hope. Lionel had always been the Luthor he worried the most about. It made him feel guilty to think that, though, as one should never base their success on another's failure, let alone another's death, and here they had two. Roger laying dead on the ground behind them, and Luthor dead... somewhere else. It was an unfair relief.

The phone rang. With no change in his walking pace, Lex answered it. "Hello. Yes. Yes. The doctor still has to release the body. Until then, we're running on the prescribed standards. There's a meeting tomorrow. Chrisia will email you the details." There was silence for awhile while Lex listened and they walked. "I understand, and completely agree. You've always been a strong part of LuthorCorp, and hope that that will continue. Yes, thank you." More silence. "All right, then. I'll see you tomorrow."

After Lex had put away the phone, Clark burst out, "Seriously, Lex?! That's ridiculous! Your dad just died and they're hounding you already?"

Lex snorted. "Vultures circle while the animal is still moving. One that's down and cold? That's the perfect target to go for. Rotting meat is easier to eat. I told you not to answer the phone. It was inevitable." His mouth twisted. "The doctor hasn't released the body because they haven't dug it out of the rubble yet. I called a crew in from Metropolis, since the rescue groups here are tied up rescuing. I also called in some other rescue groups for more relief efforts. The tornados went through six towns. Smallville was the only one that got all three at the same time, though."

He was silent for a moment. "They don't want to take my word for it that Dad is dead, but at the same time it would take a hell of a lot of gall to claim it when it's not true, so they're moving forward, but very cautiously. The banks aren't releasing LuthorCorp money to me yet, but I do have everything I'd raised for the buyout. That's enough to work with for now. When they dig Dad's body out, ..." Lex huffed out a laugh, "then they'll have to figure out if I murdered him or not."

"What?" Clark stopped in his tracks and then hurried forward to catch up with them again. "But, but you were trapped there _with_ him!"

"And who knows that but you?" Lex said softly. "Though I left enough of my blood there. But that will leave other questions, so I hope they don't notice that. They probably won't. Storm going through, partial structural collapse... it would take a more devious mind than mine to think that up and arrange it with such perfect timing. The authorities won't have a problem. It's the board members. They will want the company for themselves, not for me. I'm too young, too inexperienced, and my dad's last move to force me home won't have helped in their eyes."

Closing the plant and blaming it on Lex's poor management. Jonathan shook his head. Lex wasn't responsible for that, but it was his battles with his father that nearly lost hundreds of people their jobs. Lex had worked hard to fix it... but who knew how the battle would have come out? They weren't to know now. Jonathan had the same mixed feelings about it. A person was dead, somebody's father was dead, and it was not a good thing. All you had to do to know it wasn't was to look at Lex and see how torn up he was, even if he was hiding it as much as he could. In the phone calls, there was no evidence at all, controlled and smooth. But when it was just them... the façade came down. There was a world of hurt in that young man.

The phone rang again. Jonathan reached over and grabbed it from Lex's hands. "Give me that."

He punched the answer button. "What?!"

There was silence on the other end. "Jonathan?"

That was a familiar voice. "Nell." He wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

"This _is_ Lex's phone..." The tone was half statement, half question.

"It is. What do you want?" Jonathan thought of what Martha would say to that and hurriedly added, "to talk to him about?"

"I thought I could... I thought he might... Look – is Lex actually there?"

With a sigh, Jonathan handed the phone to Lex. Random business people he could have handled, but not Nell that he'd grown up with and who had pursued him all through high school. She still hadn't forgiven him for bringing Martha back from the university. 

Lex smiled a little when he accepted the phone again. "Hello? Yeah. Heh, yeah. I know." 

As Lex paused to listen, Jonathan reflected that he wasn't the only one that Nell knew. Lex's whole body had relaxed when talking, and his speech was more casual than Jonathan had heard yet.

"Thank you, Nell," Lex said softly. "Coming from you, that actually means something."

Jonathan winced, realizing he hadn't yet said he was sorry for Lex's dad's death. He noticed Clark wincing on the other side. At least he wasn't the only one.

"That... are you sure you wouldn't mind? Honestly, Nell, that would be wonderful. I was dreading having to do the arrangements, though I'm sure Dad has it all laid out in his will somewhere. You know him. Knew him. Yeah. Yeah." Lex laughed, a surprisingly happy sound. "Okay, that would be... yes, please." 

They talked for awhile longer, apparently about funeral arrangements, and then Lex said good bye and hung up. He looked better for having talked to her.

Jonathan held his hand out. 

After a pause, Lex gave him the phone with another wry smile. "I do need to talk to some of them."

"Not all of them." Jonathan probably wasn't the best person to screen the calls, but good enough for the moment. "Do you have a secretary?"

Lex snorted. "I've got Dad's secretary, Chrisia, taking care of the meeting arrangements, but she's not been with him long enough for much more. Dad doesn't keep admins or assistants for very long. Except for Dominic, and I'm not going to trust _him_ with anything."

"What about Gabe?" The Sullivans hadn't been in Smallville for long, but both father and daughter had worked hard in their own separate ways. Not to fit in, like some people did and usually failed, but they worked to do the best jobs they could, which was the better strategy in the end. 

"I left a message for Gabe, and I'm sure he's left messages for me, but we keep missing each other."

"How did you have enough _time_ to do all that?" Clark burst out. "I dropped you off at the hospital only a couple of hours ago."

Lex shrugged. "That's a lot of time, if you know how to manage it." He stopped dead in his tracks. "Oh blast."

They turned to look at him.

With a sigh, Lex reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. "I drove as close as I could to the GPS location. Not walked. It's on the opposite side from where we are now, over near some small lake or something."

"Hobson's Pond," Jonathan couldn't help the identification.

"I can go back and get it," Clark offered.

Jonathan shot him a worried glance. It would make more sense for them to get to the farm and grab the truck and drive. Otherwise...

"If you wouldn't mind?" Lex said with some relief. "I left the new laptop in it, and I'm going to need it."

"Sure." Clark's grin lit up his whole face. He hesitated for a moment, carefully _not_ looking at Jonathan, then he leaned forward, kissed Lex on the cheek, and ran off. He started off at a normal speed and then within a few steps speeded up and he was lost to sight. The trees and plants bent in the air wake that he left.

Jonathan clenched his teeth.

"I'm going to have to do something about that," Lex said very softly, apparently forgetting that Jonathan was there.

He wasn't entirely sure, but he might have let out a growl.

Whatever he did, it certainly got Lex's attention.

Lex whipped around to face Jonathan, his eyes wide and fear upon his face. He staggered a bit from the quick movement, and then pain replaced the fear for a moment. He closed his eyes. "Oh fuck. Mr. Kent. I'm so sorry..." Lex opened up. "I didn't mean to. I really didn't. I _know_ Clark is only fifteen. It's too young, too young... he's still just a teenager. But he's so... he's the best thing that's ever come into my life. I've been trying to be good. He's my friend, and that's the most amazing thing and I've never tried to be anything else. I've been careful. Him being my friend, that's always been good. He's too young, too innocent. He likes _girls_! I tried to get him Lana instead. It's just a crush, I'll just wait it out. I was happy being his friend, really. I don't want to hurt him." Lex breathed deeply and shook his head.

 _He's worried about the kiss_ , Jonathan realized. Not Clark speeding off using his powers. That part didn't even seem to faze Lex at all. But he was babbling over the kiss. And there he went again after he caught his breath.

"I didn't mean to. I just..." Lex closed his eyes again. "He rescued me. He pulled me out from under the rubble. I'd been trapped there all night, and it could have been the end of me. I'd just admitted my culpability in Nixon's investigations and still he cared about me."

Jonathan narrowed his eyes again. But it was a bit of a no-brainer with the phone call and everything else going on. Also, not quite relevant at the moment. If Clark knew, Jonathan and Martha would know later, and it didn't sound like Lex was holding back.

"I was trapped but my life wasn't in immediate danger, yours was... and he rescued me. No hesitation. I wasn't unconscious and he still did it. He used his powers right in front of me and didn't regard it and saved me. Again. My savior, my angel, my friend."

Lex looked right at Jonathan, his eyes haunted. "I kissed him. I had no right to. I didn't know his feelings. I know he's too young. But I lost my head and I kissed him." A softness spread over his face that transformed him into somebody almost Clark's age, a wonder and joy that Jonathan hadn't ever seen there before. "He didn't hit me; he kissed me back. He kissed me..."

There was a brief silence while Lex was lost in the memories and Jonathan was trying very hard not to imagine it. Unfortunately, it was already there. But he wasn't going to interrupt, no, he wasn't. This was more important than his sensibility. It was an outdated sensibility anyhow. He liked Uncle Richard just fine, didn't he? And it wasn't like he didn't see this coming. Unfortunately.

Finally, Lex shook himself out and gulped, waiting for Jonathan's judgment.

Jonathan sighed. "What did you mean, you'll have to do something about it?"

Lex blinked. "He's too young, he's too special. I'm too dark, I'm too much in the public eye. I can't risk him. Especially after this. I thought I could just stay in Smallville and Dad and the world would leave me alone, but instead they all followed me. And now I _can't_ stay in Smallville. LuthorCorp can never be run from anywhere but Metropolis. And I can't keep Clark and I can't risk him, and I don't know what I can do, but I should never have kissed him. If I hadn't kissed him, it wouldn't even be a problem, but you saw him. It's... one way or the other, he's going to be hurt. But it has to be done."

Jonathan couldn't help it, he laughed.

There was a moment of silence afterwards as Lex stared, utterly baffled. Jonathan shook his head. "Son, if that's been you being careful, I'd hate to see what you're like if you're actually courting somebody. Around Clark, you're worse than a bitch in heat."

Lex flushed beet red.

Jonathan snorted, then gestured out. "Keep the feet moving." He started walking again and Lex caught up quickly and matched his stride.

"I've got stuff to tell you, Lex, and you're not going like it. Heck, Martha won't like it if she finds out I said it. But you've got to hear it. I know it's bad timing, but we're just not going have any other, so you're going to hear me out.

"Lex, you've been a pain since you arrived in Smallville. From the very first when you nearly ran over my son because of your damn speeding and your damn cell phone." Jonathan growled a little in remembrance.

From the side, Lex winced. He muttered something very low under his breath but Jonathan couldn't hear. Just as well, he suspected.

"I don't think you know how you come off to us. You know you're a Luthor, and you're expecting that, but what you're not seeing is how annoying and self-righteous you are, shoving things into our faces and lying to get your way, thinking you know best for us."

This time, Lex refrained from even muttering. Jonathan had been expecting some sort of protest. But even without it, he pressed on. "You bring your city manners and your smooth talk, and you expect all of us to just roll over and take it because we're just country bumpkins and you're the sophisticated educated one. You expect us to treat you like an adult, but you hang out with the teenagers – and not the seniors about to graduate teenagers, you hang out with the fourteen year olds who were in grade school the year before." Jonathan considered going into just what the town thought of that, and then shook his head and moved on to the more important part. "You lie to get your way and you don't really care, as long as it gets you what you want. Even if your intentions are good, you see no problems in being underhanded along the way because the end goal is all that matters to you."

"That's not true," Lex said tightly.

Jonathan rolled his eyes. "Just a business meeting to talk about local farmers' difficulties..." he said with some scorn. "Farmers, plural."

"You wouldn't have come if I hadn't said that!"

"My point," Jonathan pointed out.

"You lie too." Lex backed off from his original protest and redirected it.

Jonathan stopped and turned to face Lex. "Are you honestly going to stand there and try and compare **protecting my son** to that stupid trickery of yours?"

Lex dropped his eyes. 

"It's not your only one either." Jonathan started walking again. He could feel Lex following after. "I don't blame you directly, I blame your upbringing." He caught himself up just before he said he blamed Lionel – as much as he was beating Lex up right now, that would be below the belt. It would be true, but too much. "I blame the city and the ways of the people around you and the expectations you've been brought up with.

"I might be a small-town farmer, but it's not like I've never been out of Smallville in my life. How do you think I met Martha?"

There was a small, undefined noise from Lex's direction.

Jonathan grinned. He knew how much Lex admired his wife. His wife and his son. It was Jonathan who was the sticking point; he always had been. "Not Met U, but Kansas State. I majored in agriculture, no surprise. Bet you can't guess what Martha's was?"

Lex cleared his throat. "Business? Economics?"

Lex admired Martha and attributed to her the things that he respected. Jonathan shook his head. "Botany. Specialty in horticulture. She went with what she loved, rather than what would advance her in her father's world. I lived in that world too, for six years. I loved Martha and I wanted what was best for her, and I didn't believe that was taking her from her home and her world and transplanting her to mine. My parents were doing fine with the farm and they didn't need me, and I wanted to spend the time with Martha." He paused, thinking of those years. Finally, he shook his head. "We came back. Smallville has its own problems, it's not perfect, the people aren't angels, I know that. But the world out there... too many people trying to get ahead by climbing over other people, by dropping names, not caring about their neighbors unless they could do something for them... Martha hadn't liked it when she grew up in it, and I didn't like it trying to fit into it for her sake. So we came back to Smallville. My brave Martha had to change and work and adapt to a strange land and people who weren't so sure about her, but she saw the possibilities and she stayed." Jonathan loved his wife and admired her greatly. He sympathized with Lex in that regard, and Lex didn't even know the half of it.

The barn came within sight in the distance.

"You're not a Smallville person, Lex. You might like my son, and I'll give you that you've done a good job on the plant, but you're not a small town person. You've tried best that you can, but it's not working. Not only don't you think like rural suburbia, but you don't respect us and you don't _want_ to."

"I do," Lex protested, but it was a weak-hearted protest. He was wearing down.

Jonathan chose not to dispute that one. "Clark's not a small-town person either. He grew up with our values, and he cares for people, but he's not going to stay here. The world is out there and he's going to be out in it, carrying his love for people and his honor, and living with all sorts. He can do what I never could, because he's strong in spirit and he has courage. But he's going to need friends, and family more than just us, because we'll be here and he'll be there.

"Don't you dare abandon him."

Lex stopped dead.

Jonathan turned his back to his barn and his home and faced Lex. "I always knew you were after Clark but I didn't know you liked him. Lust and curiosity don't equal respect. You're smart, you're persistent, and you've got guts and courage. You don't, however, always apply them in the right combinations. You can be brave as spitfire and gain everybody's respect, and you can also lie like the devil and lose it. You're a contradiction. You wonder why you're still not accepted, while you yourself don't accept anybody here. Except Clark. Clark's your exception to everything and believe me, the whole town has noticed that too. But you actually do like him. That makes a difference, a huge one. Now, though... what you're going to do now has me concerned. You've shown you have two basic modes – full speed ahead and full speed reverse. For the last year, you've been after Clark in fifth-gear with the thrusters on. Now, you're panicked and you're about to change gears and high-tail it out of here. You say it's for Clark, and in your mind, I'm sure it is, but did you learn nothing from your Zero incident?"

"I learned that people coming after me strike at those near me," Lex said tightly. 

And destroy whole herds of cows. Jonathan wasn't too happy about that one himself. But the human factor was worse. Ordinarily, he would agree with Lex and just yesterday he would have said Clark was safer as far away from Lex as humanly possible. That though, was before today. Before Clark had revealed his powers and Lex had revealed his heart. Yesterday, he wouldn't have thought that Lex had one. "You need a better set of friends. And Clark shouldn't lose the ones he has. If you don't want people coming after you, don't do stupid shit that will make them."

Lex winced. 

On a normal day, Jonathan wouldn't be getting anywhere near this amount of reaction from Lex. He guarded himself too well and hid too much of what he was behind what he thought he should be. But he'd been knocked to the ground and battered and stripped down until a kiss broke him entirely. It was probably the only time ever he'd get to say something like this and not have Lex reject it entirely. He'd see later if Lex actually absorbed any of what he'd said.

"Come on, Lex," Jonathan turned around again. "Let's go home."

They were walking through Kent land, now, following familiar paths. Jonathan did some wincing of his own as he saw just how much damage the storm had done. Tree branches were down, the chicken coop was overturned, hay was scattered everywhere. It was going to take a lot of hard work to fix it.

They'd been walking for awhile in silence, with the barn getting closer. Then Lex asked, "Why haven't I been getting any calls?"

Jonathan grinned mercilessly. "Turned it off."

Lex didn't bother protesting, but Jonathan could hear the under-the-breath sigh of exasperation.

He shrugged, "You didn't really want me to be answering those. They're going to voice mail, and Martha will sort through them and figure out which ones you need to return. You don't have to be answering all of them yourself. If you weren't an over-achiever, you'd know that."

"There wasn't anybody else who could take them."

Jonathan shook his head. "It's not rocket science, Lex. Grab somebody out of one of those piles of people you've been calling for rescue teams and stock meetings and bank arrangements and have them help you. For pity's sake, Dan at the bank would send over his wife if he thought he could help you now – or even come himself!"

"I don't---" Lex stopped himself mid-sentence. Jonathan was sure the next words would have been 'trust them'. 

He shook his head. The boy had been trained to be alone. No three guesses as to where that came from. Wasn't going to be an issue from now on, though, sadly enough. They would do better by him, if they could. "Don't worry about it."

Then they were through the yard and walking up to a yellow farmhouse and a lovely vision in a blue dress and bright red hair ran down the steps and flung herself into his arms.

"Jonathan!"

He held Martha just as tightly and buried his face in her hair and breathed in her scent. He'd thought he'd been dead three times over since this thing started the day before, and most recent a scant half-hour ago. To have his wife with him now and them both alive... it was a miracle. He loved her so much. 

After a few moments, he shifted so he could see over her shoulder. Their embrace had turned them partially around, and beyond he could see Lex standing. Watching them, forlorn and alone, a terrible heart-breaking look of yearning and despair on his face, in the moment he didn't think he was being watched.

Jonathan kept one arm around Martha, but disentangled himself from the hug and reached out with his other hand to grab Lex by the shoulder – his uninjured one – and bring him in. He looped his arm over Lex's shoulders, pinning him close. "Lex saved my life."

"Oh!" Martha raised a hand to her mouth and then reached forward and also hugged Lex. "Thank you. Thank you, Lex."

Along the way, he'd intercepted a look from Martha that she hadn't put into words. Jonathan hurried to reassure her. "Clark's fine. He's driving Lex's car back."

Lex unwound himself from the various arms and glanced down the road. "Shouldn't he be here by now? We were walking..."

That had been smoothly done, extracting himself while providing a good reason for doing so and distracting right after with the question. Jonathan twitched a smile at Lex's maneuverings. Yesterday, he would have been infuriated by them. How quickly some things changed. "He's probably driving back at fifteen miles an hour so he doesn't scuff your car. It'll be a while longer."

Lex involuntarily huffed out a laugh. "He would, wouldn't he? Somehow he missed out on the fast car gene."

"That he did," Jonathan agreed, shaking his head. Nobody would have caught _him_ going that slow if he'd had the chance to drive one of Lex's cars.

He turned to Martha. "I'm sorry to be so abrupt, honey, but do you have anything to eat? I'm starving." And Lex undoubtedly needed to be fed as well, though the kid would never say so. He subtly directed Martha's gaze that way and got back her slight nod of understanding.

"Of course, dear." Martha turned a step, moving out of their way and indicating with her motion for them to go into the house.

As Lex drew up alongside her, though, she reached a hand out to stop him – not touching him but stopping with the motion alone. "Lex... I'm very sorry about your father."

Lex stood for a moment, still and indefinable, the whole of himself taken back so deeply into his body that there was nothing left on the surface. Then he came forward enough to look searchingly at Martha. After a moment, he smiled, a real smile, even if it was a little strained, not one of his fake city smiles. "Thank you," he said quietly. "I appreciate it."

Jonathan could tell that Martha wanted desperately to hug Lex again, but that it just wasn't going to happen again anytime soon, not after the last involuntary one. Lex was so prickly, it was a wonder that anything got through his defenses. It took being rescued from a wrecked car and given CPR for drowning to do that. 

He kept moving into the house. When they'd walked across to the Kent farms, he'd felt better. As they moved into the courtyard, he'd relaxed. Now, inside his home filled with the memories and mementos of family love for five generations, he finally felt safe again. He was home with Martha, and Clark would be joining them soon. As a family, they would be able to get through anything.

Though it looked like there had been more than just the family there. He grabbed one of the many sandwiches off the table and turned to Martha, even as he bit into it. Food. Not just any food, but Martha's delicious food, even if it had been mass produced.

Martha smiled, catching his question. "The search teams that had been looking for you were just here. You missed them by about ten minutes or so." She turned towards the phone. "I'll call and let them know you're back."

Jonathan grimaced. "I'll call." He grabbed another sandwich and pressed it into Lex's hands before he passed Martha to the phone. "I need to talk to the sheriff anyhow."

Lex didn't look like he'd be eating that food. His eyes were on Jonathan, a cynical gaze lurking behind the carefully blank face.

"You saved my life," Jonathan repeated firmly. "Ethan will understand that, and Clark and I are witnesses."

"He may not have killed you," Lex replied, echoing some of Jonathan's earlier thoughts.

There was a sore spot on his ribs where the shovel had hit. His shirt clung to that part, suggesting blood had been spilled. It still hurt like the dickens. Even if that shovel heading for his head hadn't connected, Roger would have tried again and again until he'd succeeded. Maybe left Jonathan there, wounded and unconscious, bleeding out while Roger abducted his son. His son who was his life, as his wife was. "Deal with it, Lex," Jonathan suggested, "It's the truth."

Suddenly, Lex looked a lot younger than his twenty-one years, almost matching Clark's age. Martha bustled over to him and got him into a chair with a glass of orange juice and eating the sandwich before he knew what hit him.

With a smile, Jonathan turned to the phone.

/// /// ///

Clark parked the car carefully in the driveway, hoping he hadn't scraped any paint off anywhere. The dirt road to Hobson's pond wasn't a safe drive for a truck, let alone Lex's little sports car. Of course, from the look of it, Lex himself hadn't taken any great care. But that was Lex with Lex's stuff – not cautious of any of it, risking his life as easily as he might any of his possessions that he could replace.

Clark would have to teach him to take better care of both. Or at least his life. It wasn't just his anymore, was it? He'd given part of it to Clark, and Clark was going to take care of the part he had.

He scanned the house before he went in. All looked quiet. His mom was in the office, his dad was in the dining room, and it looked like Lex was in the family room... on Dad's recliner chair. That was a first. He switched off the x-ray vision and looked at the normal yellow house with the familiar door and he took a breath and headed in.

His dad looked up as he came in and held a finger up to his lips. He nodded to the family room and Clark saw then what he hadn't seen with the x-ray. Lex was fast asleep. 

Clark tiptoed to the chair and knelt beside it, looking at Lex. 

"We tried to get him to go to the guest room, but he insisted on being down here in case he was needed. Stubborn. So we stretched him out on the recliner – easier on his arm than the sofa, and he was asleep in minutes. He's pretty out of it, but still, be careful not to wake him. He needs the rest." Jonathan said softly, in the voice he used around sick cows and newborn kittens. Low and reassuring, soothing and encouraging.

Lex didn't move. Clark nodded to his father and then went back to examining Lex.

Still paler than normal, Lex looked better than when he'd dragged him out from under the rubble. Clark hadn't gotten to look his fill earlier at the pond, too busy recovering from the kryptonite and then they'd been moving. Lex'd been cleaned up from most of the blood and dirt that had been smeared into his skin from the collapse, and a large gauze bandage over the cut on his head, covering up the horrid looking bruise all around it. His arm was in the sling, an air cast holding it steady. He guessed Lex hadn't wanted to take the time at the hospital for a real cast.

His eyes were shut, thin blue veins showing on the caucasian skin, with the dark lashes lying against his cheeks. Asleep. Real sleep this time, and peaceful in their home. Not unconscious like he'd been so many times under that rubble. 

Clark didn't think Lex even knew how often he'd fallen unconscious while they were talking, picking up the threads of conversation as if it had just been a pause. And Clark helpless outside the heap, afraid to do anything. When he'd mentioned the truck blowing up, and Lex had jerked up and hit his head... everything had shifted. The broken beams, concrete blocks, rubble everywhere on top of Lex, it had all shifted and Clark could only watch it, holding his breath. It was easy to see how Lex's dad had been crushed when it had first come down, and just as easy to imagine it happening to Lex while Clark stood there. He had seen it happen to Greg, those months ago, when the supports in the barn had given way. Clark still blamed himself for not moving quicker and rescuing Greg somehow, even if Greg had been trying to kill him at the time. Lex hadn't been trying to kill him, Lex had been trying to rescue his dad, and unable to... his hand holding his father's so tightly. 

Clark's x-ray vision had kept flipping in and out while he'd watched Lex, emotions and his control making things difficult. Sometimes he'd seen bricks and wood and plaster, sometimes he saw Lex, sometimes he saw Lionel, sometimes he'd seen two skeletons lying there, almost indistinguishable without Lex moving. It had been scarier than hell.

But Lex was alive now, and here and safe, and he'd even given Clark his dad back, twice. 

It took everything Clark had not to lean in and reach and pick Lex up and hold him close. He didn't want to wake Lex, but the need to touch and feel was overpowering. It was funny, he'd had those feelings for awhile, but he hadn't even realized what they were until Lex had kissed him. He'd just thought they were friends, and of course he wanted to protect Lex, because Lex needed protecting. 

Carefully, he reached out and put his hand on the edge of the recliner arm, near to where Lex's hand lay. He didn't touch because he didn't want to wake Lex, but he wanted to be near.

When Amanda's brother had shot at Lex, shot and missed, but cracked the glass and Lex had gone toppling over the edge in that horrid restraining jacket that meant Lex wouldn't even be able to do anything about his fall... Clark had pushed the couch over and made sure Lex would land okay in it with some really quick maneuvering, and then came running back in... Seeing Lex on that couch, with water and glass all over him and blood running down the side of his face... Clark had knelt beside him then, and had looked, and had even reached out to daringly touch, and Lex had looked back at him, and Clark had never known. 

He'd avoided Lex for awhile after that, telling himself and Lex it was because he needed to think about Lex's past and the things in it, and that's what he'd thought it was, but really, he'd lied to himself, hadn't he? It was because of this. This feeling he had that he now had words for and knew what it was. He wasn't going to be avoiding Lex now. Not at all.

After a moment more, Clark stroked the fabric of the recliner next to Lex, not daring to touch his flesh and wake him up. Then he got up and resolutely turned his back. Lex was okay and that was what mattered. 

"Hey Dad," Clark said softly, walking back to the dining room. 

Jonathan held up a hand to ask for a moment while he listened to the phone he was holding. He wrote another line on the notebook in front of him, then punched the phone off. 

Clark blinked, noticing it was Lex's phone. 

"I'm getting the voicemails," Jonathan explained quietly and pointed behind him, "and Martha is calling back the important ones and coordinating things. Gabe's on his way over and will help when he gets here."

Clark could hear his mom's voice from the office.

"Dad..." Clark hesitantly asked without a real direction.

Jonathan got up and gestured for Clark to head out. "We'll talk in the barn."

When they got there, Clark meandered briefly through the familiar area and then took his courage in his hands and turned to his dad. "Are you... okay with it?"

"With Lex?" Jonathan leaned against the wall between stalls. "Or with you and Lex?"

Clark blushed. "Me and Lex." It sounded good. It sounded scary. It sounded really scary when he was talking about it with his Dad. 

"I won't say I'm any too happy about it," Jonathan frowned, "but what's done is done."

"You're not going to say I can't?" Clark's heart lifted.

His dad shook his head. "You haven't listened to me for the last several months when I've been telling you to stay away from him as friends. You're sure as heck not going to listen to me if I try and keep you away now." His gaze went to the wall over Clark's head. "And Lex has no other family now." 

Jonathan was silent for a moment, then went on. "He knows your secrets now. All of them." 

Clark blinked. "I didn't tell him! Just... he knows the strength and the speed because I had to get him out, and I think he already knew about those, but I didn't tell him about the alien part."

"Roger knew. He was talking about it when Lex sh... saved me. There's no way Lex didn't hear." His dad was perfectly matter of fact about it. There was a rigidity behind his features that spoke of a hidden panic, but Jonathan was keeping it off the surface and out of the conversation.

Clark had been too curled up in pain to notice what Nixon had been saying. His eyes grew wide thinking about it. Lex knew. Lex knew that he was an alien... and he'd still kissed Clark back. Or, well, at least he'd allowed Clark that kiss when he'd gone off to get the car. He hadn't said a word, he hadn't looked at Clark any differently... Clark hadn't even known that Lex knew because Lex hadn't done anything weird at all. Huh.

Jonathan shrugged and kept going. "If this had been yesterday... yesterday I would have told you to stay the hell away from him and we'd figure out what to do about his knowing about you. Now, though..."

"You're changing your mind just because his dad is dead?" Clark asked incredulously.

Jonathan grimaced. "Lionel Luthor was... Well, no point in it now. And it's not right to be glad for it. But the honest truth is that Lex would have followed his dad almost anywhere, even though he said he was trying for a different way. Lionel was still his father. But no, that wasn't what I was thinking. Or at least not only. " He eyed Clark. "I don't think I want to tell you what I'm thinking either. Just... Lex and I talked on the way back. Or I talked at him. You probably wouldn't approve. End result, though, we'll be taking Lex in. Whether he likes it or not."

His dad's expression lightened and he laughed. Clark blinked at the change.

"I've got to say, Son, you're not the best boyfriend in the world." Jonathan was grinning from ear to ear. "I know I taught you better than that, but one little thing and it's right out your head."

Clark opened his mouth and then closed it. He couldn't for his life think of what his dad was talking about. "Huh?"

"You come out to your dad with your boyfriend – and then you take off and leave him there with your dad. Alone. Not nice, Clark. Not very nice at all."

"Oh..." Clark flushed red. He hadn't even thought of that. Well, that's what his dad just said. But... he had. He'd kissed Lex in open defiance of his dad and then sped off so _he_ wouldn't get the lecture, but he'd forgotten about Lex. Even though he loved his dad a lot, nobody would ever call Jonathan an easy-going personality. Now that he was thinking, Clark was scared about what had happened during that walk back. He shouldn't have left Lex alone... he should have gotten the car later. But, well, it seemed to have worked out. Lex was sleeping in the family room, and his mom and dad were helping him with the calls and stuff. 

He grinned sheepishly. "I didn't see any torture marks."

Jonathan snorted, "Oh, they wouldn't be physical, Son. I know better than that." He shrugged. "I took a few licks, but Lex was in no condition for a really good fight so I kept it to the basics."

Clark winced.

"You can ask your boyfriend later, but I suspect you're not going to get much of an answer there either."

Clark wasn't sure if he was embarrassed or happy about the repeated use of 'boyfriend'. It was a new concept for him. But it marked Lex as his, and it meant his dad thought so too, so overall, happy probably won out.

"I've already given you the talk on girls. Guess I'll have to go do some research before I can give you one on guys."

On the other hand, that tipped the scale over to pure embarrassment. "Dad!" He was sure his face was beet red. "Uh, no, Dad, that's okay... I don't think I need another talk... you don't have to... uh..."

Jonathan laughed. Then he settled more seriously. "I won't give you that talk, then, but I do want you to be careful with him." 

"I am careful!" Clark might have problems with his newer powers, but he'd grown up with his strength and he knew how to adjust for that instinctively, even when he was angry or emotional. The times it got out of hand were, to his shame, when he deliberately let it.

"I didn't mean that," Jonathan waved a hand. "I meant... You're fifteen. He's twenty-one."

"I'm an alien you picked up in the field! You had to guess at my age. I might be twenty-one too."

His dad rolled his eyes. "Doubtful. You're definitely a teenager. But that's beside the point. _Legally_ you're fifteen. And _legally_ Lex is twenty-one. And legally, you could get him in a shit-load of trouble."

Clark had been expecting a moral lecture. Not a... legal one. "What?"

"There's rules, Son. Rules put down by people who want to protect their children against predators. And while you might have your own thoughts about Lex and Lex about you, there are others out there who really are after nothing but their own pleasure and don't care who they hurt to get it – so don't you tell me that law shouldn't be there. It's there because of the bad people in the world. And every now and again, good people get caught up in it.

"I believe you when you say you like him... Watching you there with Lex while he was sleeping was pretty revealing." Jonathan huffed a half-laugh, "And Lex made his own case with just as little thought. But in the end, it doesn't all matter what I think – it matters what the world sees. And the world follows Lex. You've had experiences with that already with just the talk around town with you two as friends. Imagine how much more it's going to be now. And Lex... Lex is going to be in the spotlight for awhile, what with his dad dead and the business meetings. They're vultures out there , Clark, pure bottom feeders. You should hear some of those voicemails I've been listening to. They're going to pounce on any little thing, and you and him, that's not a little thing."

Jonathan cleared his throat. "Now, here's what it is."

Clark was then treated to a precise discourse on just exactly what the statutory rape laws were and what offenders could expect for jail time and legal stuff and what sort of other social and media and local talk went around about both sides. It was complete and didn't miss anything. 

By the time the lecture was done, Clark was ready to swear not even to _touch_ Lex for the next two years. Three years to be safe. God. It was horrible. And in Smallville would be worse yet, let alone what it would do to Lex's business! 

After he digested it a bit, Clark looked up at his dad suspiciously. "Say... just why _do_ you know all that anyhow?"

Jonathan shrugged, unapologetic. "I thought Lex was one of the monsters, and I'd do anything to protect you. I wouldn't have wanted to – the consequences to you are pretty nasty too. But if he'd actually done anything..."

"Dad!" Clark was horrified.

"I'm not saying sorry for it, Son. Lex never gave me reason to think otherwise until now."

"But..." Okay, Clark had had those arguments with his folks a thousand times already. His mom was gentler but also made no bones about her not liking Clark hanging out with Lex, even if she wasn't quite as anti-Luthor as his dad was. Clark wasn't going to win any of those same arguments now. Though apparently somehow Lex himself had. "What did Lex do? Why do you think he's not..." Clark couldn't bring himself to say 'monster', even if it was just repeating his dad's words, "that way now?"

Jonathan turned to look around the barn, his eyes going over the horses stabled there, the tractor with the various parts next to it waiting for repair, the stairs to Clark's loft, and everything else that was home. "He was himself. For once." 

"But..."

Jonathan shook his head. "Never mind, Son, never mind. 'Sides, I think I hear Gabe's car out there."

They headed out of the barn together, Clark's mind still whirling, yet settling over and over again on the end fact that somehow Lex was now theirs. Not just his alone, but all of theirs.

/// /// /// 

Lex wearily typed a response to the latest thinly-veiled email of rebellion. It wasn't even daily, it was now almost hourly that he had to deal with the support ebbing away. While he had been able to persuade enough board members to be on his side for a buy-out, splitting himself out from the LuthorCorp field and maybe making less competition for them, that was not the same support for him ruling his own company in a position most of them had wanted to be in. Three weeks and some days, and it was still every man for himself, with no consensus in sight. 

He was trying his best, working to all hours, being seen by the workers and the members, not making any major changes... not that he was allowed to, without having been confirmed. The initial meeting had been more of a review of the situation, and it had been dominated with the power struggles as each tried to be the new voice of the company. Yet none of them could replace Lionel Luthor, not even his son. Lex had tried. He had really tried. And if he'd had a few more years, perhaps he would have made it. If his father's last move hadn't been to discredit and belittle him. If his father hadn't died while visiting his son.

That email sent, Lex stared at the monitor for a long moment, trying to pick out the next one to respond to. They were all important, all needed answering, and none of them were hopeful.

Abruptly, Lex got up and walked to the windows. The glass went from the ceiling to the floor, showing Metropolis stretching out below. The lights starting to come on as twilight crept over the city in the late setting of the sun that heralded the start of summer. Most workers had long gone home, off to families and friends, or just to their own company with their own entertainment and relaxation. All except for Lex Luthor, up in his crystal tower, fighting tooth and nail to hold onto it. Using his father's lessons to the best of his ability and hating every moment of it.

Somewhere in Smallville, there was a quiet family. One that had brought in the cows and fed the horses and chickens and were sitting down to a delicious home-cooked meal. With talk about the table that would be of their daily doings, the repairs to buildings around town, who was out of the hospital and who was still in it, and possibly, maybe, a curiosity over how Lex was doing. Maybe. Lex couldn't help but want it, even as he knew he didn't belong. Their love, their strength, their devotion to each other... it was all that a family should be; it was nothing that his had been. If they knew what Lex was doing now to try and keep his father's company, they would be disgusted.

Lex leaned his head against the glass, and tried not to let his fear of heights get the better of him. He could control it, he would control it. His father didn't like weaklings and a weakling couldn't run LuthorCorp.

His father was dead. Smushed under concrete and wood, that he himself had set up to fail by allowing the bribes during the construction of the castle. Lex wondered a little at that, but perhaps his father never had any intention of ever staying there. Just for a visit, and what were the odds he would be there just then? Odds were for breaking, for overcoming, for succeeding where people expected one to fail. His father had created LuthorCorp from nothing. He would be so embarrassed to see his son letting it slip through his fingers now.

But Lionel had no more to say about it, buried twelve feet under, in an ornate closed coffin that didn't show how little of Lionel there had been left to bury. Flat as a rail, yet the coffin suggested a complete body, unbent, unbowed, unbroken. Yet still lowered into the ground. Nell had done his dad proud, handling it just the way Lionel would have wanted, yet flexible enough to not destroy Lex in the process. Lex had often wished when he was younger that his dad had married Nell. He wasn't sure, but he thought he might even have asked. But Nell loved Smallville, and she loved her niece, and though she would mingle easily in high society, she chose instead to stay loyal to where she was. Somehow remaining friends with Lionel, though, and not losing that of herself. Lex rather admired Nell for it. He didn't think her niece did, though.

That was one thing he wouldn't miss about Smallville. He'd initially liked the little spunky entrepreneur who had caught Clark's eye. After the opening of the Talon, however, when Lana had gone running around telling everybody that Lex wasn't to be trusted and standing there at the opening party while hearing everything she'd said told over and over to him again with laughter in their voices... Lex was thoroughly tired of her. She wouldn’t even have the Talon if it wasn’t for him, but she seemed to have forgotten that the moment it had opened, or even before. Lex wished Whitney well of his girlfriend and hoped that the erstwhile would-be soldier was back to stay. Clark had told Lex all about Whitney's return -- "I can't go off to fight in another land when my own family at home needs me after the tornados," he'd said, and the military had apparently agreed and delayed the enlistment. Lex had had nothing to do with it. Really, he hadn't. Even if Clark still wanted Lana, Lex wouldn't be helping to promote that match anymore. Whitney could have Lana and his blessings with it. Chloe would be a much better girlfriend for Clark.

In his heart of hearts, Lex didn't believe that Clark really loved him. Kissed him back, yes. Had kissed him many more times since. Seemed to be delighted with Lex's presence. But without Lex there, it would fade. Clark would find somebody better, more suited to him, more honorable... better. 

The intercom buzzed.

Lex jerked off the window, feeling as caught as if his father had just walked in. He walked to the desk, his father's desk now his, and pressed the button. "Yes?"

"Mr. Luthor, sorry to bother you. There's a Clark Kent here who insists that you'll let him in. We don't have an approved list for you set up, and your secretary has gone home. We can have them thrown out if you like."

Lex felt his mouth falling open. The funeral had been two weeks ago. There was no reason for Clark to be here, and he could have emailed or called. What was he doing there?

Just then, his cell phone rang. Lex looked at the caller ID. Clark. With a shake of his head, he answered it. "Clark, what on earth are you doing?"

"Lex, they won't let us up! Did you tell them not to let us in?"

His boyfriend was such a teenager. Lex clicked the intercom and spoke so that both the person on the other end and Clark on the cell phone could hear. "Daniel, please let Clark up, and add him to the list of approved visitors."

Clark's "Thank you!" overlapped with Daniel's "And what about his parents?"

Jonathan and Martha were here too? Lex gulped. He was truly in the fire, wasn't he? "They're also allowed and to be placed on the list."

After he'd hung up with both, Lex hurried to the restroom to check over how he looked. No hair to worry about, but he did smooth out the suit and straighten the sling. Not much he could do about the tired-looking eyes. He splashed a bit of water on his face and called it done and went back out.

And waited.

After about fifteen minutes had gone by, the cell phone rang again.

Lex snatched it up. "Where are you?" He and Clark spoke together, their voices overlaying each other in near unison.

They both paused. Lex spoke again first. "I take it you didn't get lost on the way up to the office?"

"Office?" Clark sounded horrified. "Lex, it's 9pm at night! What are you still doing in the office?!"

Ah. Lex quashed his impulse to run his hand over his head, said hand occupied with holding the phone and the other still immobilized. "You're in the penthouse." The hazards of working and living in the same building; the phrase "let them up" could apply to either. His father would never have made that mistake. His father wouldn't have let them up in the first place. Well, maybe to the office. "Hold on, I'll be right there."

He hung up before Clark could say anything more, and tried not to run to the elevators. There were still security cameras, and even though guards were paid for discretion, Lex would rather not give them something to be discreet about. The Kents coming to visit would be hard enough to explain away.

After he'd moved into the penthouse, he'd had the security cameras there disabled. Too much chance of Clark coming over, though he'd really hoped Clark wouldn't. Security had protested, but they complied. Just as they had at the castle. In this case, though, Lex got the impression that nobody expected him to be there for very long. The penthouse went along with LuthorCorp. Nest of the vulture. Not simply by family name.

The second he'd closed the door, Lex was babbling apologies, which in their turn were drowned out by glad words of greeting and a pile of arms hugging him, passing him from one Kent to the other. He ended up at Mr. Kent, who didn't accept the outstretched hand and instead also drew Lex into one of his strong rough hugs before letting him go and holding him at arm's length to study.

"Burning the midnight oil too much," was the pronouncement, "You look like you need some rest, Lex."

It was better than the more blunt "you look like shit" that he'd been expecting. Even Jonathan apparently modulated his speech around his wife. Lex smiled wanly. "There's a lot to do, Sir."

"It's Jonathan," Clark's dad reminded him yet again, before making way for Clark to come back for second hugs, worming his way in on Lex's good side and snaking an arm around Lex's waist. God help him, Lex melted into that embrace. He literally did, his whole body molding to Clark's and his support changing from his own two feet to Clark's instead. On his own, he could stand alone. When Clark was there...

"We're going to go into the kitchen," Martha announced, reaching out to tug on her husband's arm. "It looks as if you need some dinner, dear." With a few more words of reassurance, she and Jonathan disappeared into the depths of the penthouse. Lex was sure she'd be able to find the kitchen, even though she'd never seen it before.

When they were gone, Lex turned into Clark as Clark turned into him, and the embrace became a full-fronted one, each of them caught up in the other, and mouths reaching to kiss as they hadn't with parents there. Bless Martha Kent.

They merged for a time that was indefinite and infinity and yet too short and not long enough. Just at the moment before it became too heated, Clark moved them that necessary inch back to cool down. Lex had no idea how Clark did it, knew just how much was going to be too much. One would think Lex would be better at it than Clark, having had a lot more experience and being the older one. But Lex had no self control when it came to Clark. It was a good thing they were cities away normally. 

They weren't cities away now. "What are you doing here?" Lex whispered, his lips reaching up again for Clark's, even as he questioned it.

The kiss that Clark gave him was a tamer version of the ones they'd been exchanging, lips to skin and just that, yet somehow almost as satisfying. Clark moved the inch away again. "You didn't come."

"What?"

"You were supposed to come home on the weekends. You had to be here for business during the week, we get that, but you didn't come home to us." Clark settled his hands on Lex's waist and squeezed gently, as if to remind him just where he belonged.

How Lex wished it was. He smiled sadly, "Business doesn't stop on Fridays, not when there's a power struggle over something as big as LuthorCorp. Dinners and lunches and meetings... the weekends are business too."

Clark removed his hands from Lex, took a step away, and placed them on his own hips, frowning. "That's not what you told us before. You said you'd be back on the weekends."

Lex shrugged. "I didn't actually _say_ that..."

A low rumbling voice came from the doorway. "If you imply it, and people believe it, then you've said it true, whether the words were there or not, Lex. What did I tell you about that?"

Jonathan came into the room, filling it with almost as much presence as Lex's dad had done, though it was a very different feel. 

Even prepared, Lex wasn't entirely sure he'd controlled the flinch at the reminder of his dressing down on the way to the farm. Jonathan hadn't minced words then, and when a sober, awake Lex had later reflected on them, he had to admit that the farmer had a lot of good points. It was things like this that made Lex such a bad person in their eyes. No, he hadn't _said_ it... but he'd known darn well what he was doing. At the time, it was the only way to keep the Kents from following him to Metropolis – to protect them. Lex had been sure once he was here that they would have forgotten about him. Or at least given up on him, eventually.

From the way Jonathan was frowning at him, Lex was pretty sure he knew that. Clark hadn't gotten that far, still thinking Lex was a better person than he was. Jonathan knew better, though, and was shrewd enough to counter it. Lex obviously hadn't been giving the farmer nearly as much credit over the last year as he should have been.

"Come on, boys," Jonathan said gruffly but with affection. "Martha has dinner ready for us."

Lex wondered how long he and Clark had been tied up in each other. It hadn't been _that_ long, surely...

"We brought some with us," Clark murmured to Lex as he grabbed Lex's hand to walk with him. "It just needed warming up."

That was a bit of a relief to know. Lex hadn't completely lost all of his senses, though sometimes it felt like it. He glanced down at his hand in Clark's and thought that he was twenty-one years old, he shouldn't be this giddy. He knew what calf-love was, what crushes were... enough time, and you got over them. Clark shouldn't make him feel like this. Yet he couldn't help the joy just the simple touch was bringing. 

He got pulled into his own dining room, formerly his father's, and somehow Martha had made it a home. Lex knew this table, knew these chairs, the walls, the paintings, the austere and regal feel to it where you couldn't be silly or frivolous and could only talk about serious stuff and only ever laugh if you were Lionel or laughing at one of Father's jokes. Despite knowing that... Lex walked into the room and smelled Martha's home-cooked food, saw simple mashed potatoes and breaded chicken on Dad's expensive plates, the glasses of water and milk beside the plates – no wine at all – and saw her welcoming smile that was for him and said that she was glad to see him, and instantly the room became Martha's home, not his dad's past. Such a transformation, so quickly. Something that he'd always wanted, and here... without his parents. 

"Are you okay?" Clark whispered next to him.

Lex busied himself taking off the sling and air cast, distracting himself from the prickles in his eyes and blinking where they couldn't see.

"Should you be taking that off?" Martha wondered, concern in her voice, and Lex was sure it was concern about more than just the arm.

He shrugged and opened his arms wide, without hitting anybody. "See for yourself," he challenged Clark. "How is my arm?"

"It's... um," Clark blinked in that way that indicated he was switching through his vision. "It's all better. There's something... a scar?... a bit thicker?... where the break was, but I don't see the break itself anymore." He turned a puzzled gaze on Lex.

Lex stretched his right arm and scratched at where the air cast had confined it. "I told you I shouldn't have made it out of the castle." He tried to be matter of fact about it, when really it was something he'd only grown to suspect through that long long night, and then confirmed with his arm. "My white blood count was through the roof several months back. I'm apparently another one of Smallville's oddities."

There was a little silence.

"Well, you'll fit right in, then." Jonathan pulled out the chair across the table from Lex, next to Martha, and sat down. 

With a slight scraping of the other chairs, Martha and Clark also took their places and Lex was left scrambling into his own.

He supposed after accepting an alien baby as their own, that a simple mutant wasn't really that much of a stretch. The Luthor name was probably the harder part to get over. That, and Lex's own actions.

Clark grabbed Lex's hand again under the table, and Lex felt the smile appearing on his face and his fears involuntarily receded. Clark had grabbed Lex's right hand to Clark's left, so they could both eat with their regular hands above the table and not let go underneath. 

"Did you get the new cow from Emerson all settled in with the others?" Martha calmly passed the green beans around while she asked her husband about normal farm happenings.

Lex was sure they didn't normally eat dinner at 9pm, and they'd had plenty of time to talk on the long drive to Metropolis. They'd done all this for Lex. This, and the conversation too. He gripped Clark's hand, then let go to accept the bowl of beans and serve himself with their love and acceptance.

... 

It was the strangest, strangest thing to be reclining on his dad's couch, tucked in Clark's arms, talking comfortably with the Kents. Lex was sure there had been a rabbit hole somewhere that he'd fallen down.

They'd moved from the farm and Smallville at dinner, to the boardroom in the family room. 

At dinner, Lex had asked about the town and the people, about the Sullivans and the plant, about Lana and Whitney, and the farm lands recovering from the tornados.

Here, it was Martha and Jonathan drawing out of Lex what had been happening at LuthorCorp, and even Clark putting in a periodic intelligent question to show he'd been following along. 

Lex felt the better for talking about it with somebody else, somebody that he trusted, yet at the same time he was almost despairing more as talking it out showed how very hopeless it was. He was not the man his father was. Not yet, and perhaps not ever. He was not so ruthless as his dad, and the cuts from the boardroom wounded him. Jonathan said this was a good thing. Lex wasn't sure, but he didn't know what he could do about it. If he hadn't learned what he needed to learn by this time under his dad's intensive tutelage... It was hard to feel bad about that, though, wrapped in Clark's arms. If he'd been his dad's true son, he could not have been Clark's boyfriend.

"Alright," Jonathan finally said. "Let's take a step back from all this. Forget what's happening right now, and look at the bigger picture."

Lex nodded, thinking of the reach of LuthorCorp and all the various companies under its umbrella. LuthorCorp was a diverse company, not specializing in any one product, but branching out to provide management and ownership in diverse regions. They had fertilizer factories, chip manufacturers, drug compilers, and research laboratories, to think of but a few.

"Yes," Martha agreed with her husband, and leaned a bit forward, out of his arms and towards Lex. "Lex, what do you _want_ to do?"

And just like that, all of Lex's great thoughts were blown away in a puff. "I want my company," Lex said, but the words weren't as decisive as they usually were when he was talking to the board.

"It was your dad's company, and sons don't always have to follow in their parents' footsteps," Jonathan pulled Martha back to him. 

Lex had heard a little bit about how Martha's father had been furious when she didn't become a lawyer like him. As her dad's only child, her father had groomed her regardless of her gender. On the other side, Jonathan maintained the family farm himself, yet he didn't expect Clark to. In fact, fully thought that Clark would leave when he was of age. Lex had never thought about not being his father's son. Even if it hadn't been true in his youth, it was what he'd focused on for the last few years, after he'd done inadvertently proving there wasn't anything he could do to make his dad leave him alone from disgust at the drugs and partying. 

"I am a Luthor," he said softly. Testing the words more than declaring them.

"You can make what you want to of being a Luthor," Martha said firmly. "Your father's father was a different man, and so was his."

Lex knew almost nothing about his grandparents or his ancestry before them. His dad had brought the castle over yet had made much about being a self-made man. Lex had often suspected the history was nothing to be proud of. "My father built the company. He wanted me to have it."

"Funny way he had of showin--- ow." Jonathan's words were broken off, presumably by an elbow to the ribs.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Honey!" Martha instantly reached to look. "I forgot about your bruise."

Lex grinned at Jonathan's words. He actually liked the farmer's blunt way of speaking and didn't mind the irreverence towards his father. He had enough of the ones who thought that the great Lionel could do no wrong and the world loved him dear. Except for those whom Lionel had fired or screwed over. His dad had mostly had flunkies do that, though, so his great charisma wouldn't be dimmed in the eyes of those who had only superficially met him. Smallville tended to be an exception to the rule.

"He was training me," Lex replied with a shrug. He'd always known where his dad had gone with the lessons, even if they were lessons that had hurt him to the bone. Sealing Lex in a factory with a madman had been purely practical with the plant about to blow. Sending Lex into a factory primed with lies to the madman had been teaching Lex that the best way to keep a secret was to not let others know about it, no matter what. The lies had hurt worse than the gun to the head. But Lex had learned from it. He knew he would have learned from the shutdown of the Smallville plant as well. If Lex had succeeded in the buy-out, his dad would have grinned that shark's grin of his and conceded a move and then retreated to plan the next. It would have been war, but it would have also always been training. Lex believed that.

"Lex, dear," Martha pulled Lex back to the current world with her voice and gentle acceptance, "what do you want to do?"

This time, Lex didn't give back the obvious answer. He relaxed into Clark's arms and thought about how they felt around him and how much he wanted this. Simply this. Clark. His family. The love they had that he'd never before been offered yet somehow seemed to be on the offering table now. Could he have it? Lex didn't believe it. Not for real. Clark would grow up and leave him, and then he wouldn't have the Kents either. But it was a very nice dream.

"I'd like..." Lex said slowly, feeling it out, "to do research. There's a lot we don't know, particularly about the meteorites and their effects."

The Kents stirred, and Clark's arm around him tightened, but none of them said anything.

Heartened, Lex went on. "Sometimes the effects are good, sometimes horrible... we should find out what the difference is, and how we can help those hurt by them, like Earl and Jodi. We need to protect Clark while we do it and divorce him from the meteors so there's no connection, anywhere, in anybody's mind, ever. We need to find a way to neutralize what they do to Clark." Still no protests, and even a firm nod from Jonathan at the last. Greatly daring, Lex advanced his wildest ideas, "Where did Clark come from? Does he have siblings who also made it to Earth? Where did they go, if they are here? Who are they with?" 

Martha sat bolt upright, tearing herself out of Jonathan's arms. "There was only one spaceship! We poked around, carefully, asked where we could without giving anything away."

"We looked through the whole range of where the meteors came down," Jonathan rumbled, sitting up himself. "There wasn't another ship, and Clark's pod only had room for him and no more." He reached out and drew Martha back to him. "We did think about that."

"I never did," Clark said in a wondering voice behind Lex's ear.

Jonathan rolled his eyes. "You didn't know you were an alien until Lex ran into you. You had a few other things on your mind."

Lex winced. Having his theories of what had happened on that day confirmed hadn't been quite as satisfying as he'd always thought they'd be. Instead, it just made him feel more and more guilty every time he remembered the impact. If Clark hadn't been an alien coming into his powers.... Lex shivered.

Clark hugged him again, and rested his head on top of Lex's. Lex wouldn't say he'd never been with a larger man... but it was rare. The times he had, he'd reveled in being dominated and owned. Clark's ownership, though, was a very different thing, tempered with his gentleness, youth, and the parental permission all around them. Though no sex yet. Lex didn't know if there would ever be sex. Clark was more careful about that than he was, the few times they'd gotten together before the funeral. And Lex shouldn't even be thinking such things in the presence of his boyfriend's parents. 

Firmly, he forced his thoughts back. "There could have been other showers in other areas. I haven't heard of any, but I can check and find out. If I had a company that was interested in space research and exploration... what better cover? It would be the natural thing to check on, and we could gather up the rocks without anybody knowing otherwise." Lex was honestly surprised that somebody hadn't pounced on Smallville sooner, notwithstanding the unusual properties of the meteorites. It was like there was a giant mind-blur around the town that made people outside of it ignore it and people inside indifferent, with a few rare exceptions like his father and Dr. Hamilton and Nixon. "Or maybe it would be better to leave it alone. Not draw anybody's attention to it." Curiosity in and of itself wasn't a good thing. Lex learned, really he did. And he wasn't going to risk Clark for anything.

"I think..." Martha said hesitantly, "it would be good. In small moves. The search for other children. Finding out if we can help those harmed. That would be good, if..." she didn't say the rest. They all knew it. If they could do it without risking Clark.

"Does LuthorCorp have any companies like that now?" Jonathan asked, turning it back to the present.

"A few..." Lex shuddered. He'd been accessing his father's hidden records, spending his nights ferreting out the codes and access, following clues in vaults and hints in records. His dad had been very cagy about it, and Lex now knew why in more detail than he wanted to. There had been a few times he'd had to run to the bathroom to throw up, thinking of what would have happened if his father had ever gotten ahold of Clark. Surely it was wrong to be glad your own father was dead. Surely it was.

"Can you take control of those companies? Those alone, plus a couple others for cover, form a smaller company, and then let go of the rest?"

"Let go..." Lex squirmed his way out of Clark's arms and resettled on the other side of the couch. "What are you saying?" His voice turned hard, and he didn't try and modulate it.

Jonathan promptly lowered his eyes and turned very slightly away, his body language shifting to something that wouldn't provoke an enraged bull or maddened horse. 

Lex had to twitch his lips at the thought of himself pawing at the ground. But he had to admit, it was almost as effective a technique, disarming Lex before he'd finished gearing up for battle. "What do you mean?" he asked more softly.

"Bite off what you can chew," Martha said carefully, treading so gently Lex could almost see the strokes. "Don't try and do so much that it all crashes down."

"Hold what you can manage, let others take care of what you cannot," Jonathan said, still with the non-confrontational attitude.

Lex snorted, "Oh, you mean like you have?"

After he saw Martha's eyes widen and heard Clark's gasp, Lex realized what he'd said. He felt his ears burn and wished the couch would open up and let him sink through.

Jonathan's startled gaze lifted to met Lex's and there was a pause in the air. Then Jonathan laughed. "Okay, I deserve that one. Yeah." His gaze went inward and he sighed heavily. "Yeah. It's hard. None know it better than I, that's for sure. I may not have a heap of companies, but I'm sure trying to hold more than I can keep right now, and nobody's dared to tell me otherwise."

"Yes, they have," Martha murmured at his side.

Jonathan rolled his eyes. "I haven't listened. I'll admit that straight up. I haven't listened and my family has suffered for it, and our problems haven't kept Clark any safer for it – may have even brought more attention to it, the way I use him without thinking about it."

"I've never minded, Dad," Clark put in. "I _like_ working on the farm and helping you out!"

"And being exposed where anybody can see you." Jonathan shook his head. "I shouldn't have done it. It was freedom for you while you were growing and learning your powers, but it became too easy, and even despite all you do, we're still always in danger of losing the farm. A second mortgage isn't an easy thing to pay with the first still out there." He sighed. "Lex is right. I'll have to do my own retrenching. Can't ask him to, if I'm not willing to do the same."

That was unexpected. And took the fight right out of it. If Mr. Kent was considering it.... 

Lex couldn't sit still. He got up and walked around the room. He drew back the curtain and looked out at the city lights. Once, he'd considered it his heritage. Not just LuthorCorp, but the whole of the city. It would have been his. All he had to do was reach out to gather it up as pieces in the game.

Clark got up from the couch and followed him over. He didn't touch him, but stood near, also looking out. "Don't let them bully you," he said quietly. 

That was so completely opposite what Lex was expecting, he turned to look at Clark. "What?"

Clark grimaced. "I know the signs, they talked this out ahead of time, but they didn't tell me. Do what _you_ want to do, but I won't let them treat you like a kid. I trust you, no matter what."

Trust. Lex looked back outside at the city. His dad had never trusted him. Ever.

After a moment longer, Clark touched Lex's shoulder, then quietly left.

It wasn't quite a direct choice between LuthorCorp and Clark... but it was close. If Lex chose LuthorCorp, he would be constantly fighting and struggling, using his father's lessons to win for that was how one survived. He would be doing public interviews and living a public life with reporters surrounding him and always trying to get a story. Clark could not be risked in that life of Lex's, not ever. Roger Nixon had been bad enough, and he was a small-time bit player. Now dead by Lex's hand. Lex shivered, remembering the way the man had fallen. He didn't ever want to have to kill anybody ever again. Though he knew he would if he had to. As Jonathan had said earlier, though, the trick was not doing things that put you in a situation where things came back on you. Came back on those you loved. 

If Lex made this smaller company and let the bigger one go... he'd be a failure. A failure from what his father wanted for him, and a failure in the world's eyes. Reporters didn't follow after failures.

Lex let the curtain drop and went back to the couch, settling in next to Clark and feeling Clark's arms wrap around him.

Jonathan and Martha looked at him, curled in their own embrace, easy and trusting. Trusting in Lex, expecting him to do the right thing. Not the business thing, not the thing that would make the most money, but the right thing.

Lex would rather have Clark, no matter what. Clark and his family. Lex might have lost his own family, and he might be giving up his original hopes and dreams... but it was to a richer gain than any he could have dreamed of before, and greater hopes. He didn’t know how long he’d have Clark for, but however long, it would be long enough.

"Let’s plan." Lex had been shattered from his great fall, everything around him in pieces and everything falling apart no matter how hard he'd tried to put it back together again. All the king's men and all the king's horses may not have even been enough to put him back together again. But perhaps the love of an amazing alien and his family could.

* * *

* * *

* * *

END

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted to [my fic journal](http://alatrific.livejournal.com/46975.html). Also, [link to Fruitbat's LJ page](http://fruitbat00.livejournal.com/53394.html) with all the art compiled.
> 
> \- For the early parts, this story floats in and out of the 'Tempest' and 'Vortex' episodes. Bits of the dialog are either directly or adapted from the show transcript. This use was intended to enhance the fan's enjoyment of the deviation of the rest of the story by showing how it could have gone differently. The order in which things happened after the castle fell were deliberately changed from canon. Every change follows upon another, and eventually, it's a different world altogether.
> 
> \- When Lex is trapped underneath: "I'm not dead yet" – Monty Python; "only mostly dead" – Princess Bride.
> 
> \- The church basement where Jonathan and Nixon were trapped... honestly, in the show, having a trailer blown on top of it was just beyond ridiculous and stupid script writing. Why not just have trees thrown around by the storm down? Makes a heck of a lot more sense. I don't know how many readers will even notice it... but I changed that part. Just because I thought the trailer was so stupid. I tried to stay fairly true to the rest of it.
> 
> \- I had to put the bit about Whitney in there. Perhaps a minor fix in the midst of everything else in there, but… had to. It was ridiculous that he *wouldn't* come back after hearing what had happened.
> 
> \- No, there's not going to be a sequel. ;p


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